If One is Good Then Two Must Be
by Shadow Master
Summary: (BtVS/Elements of The Flash 2014/Marvel Earth-10005/Marvel Earth-120703/Elements of Marvel Earth-616) When you've been fighting long enough you start to think that it'll go on forever. But to everything there's an end...and a beginning.
1. Chapter 1

"If One is Good Then Two Must Be…"

(BtVS/Elements of The Flash 2014/Marvel Earth-10005/Marvel Earth-120703/Elements of Marvel Earth-616)

email: ryley[underscore]breen

Disclaimer: I do not own any of the copyrighted material contained herein. They are each the rightful property of their respective creators and/or associated companies. I make no profit off of this whatsoever and I have no intent of changing this at any point in the future. I write stories like this because it's fun and because there are those who enjoy reading my work. Therefore I would greatly appreciate it if no lawsuits or other legal action were sent my way. I can promise you that whatever you get from me won't cover even a tenth of your legal fees.

Note: You can blame the DVD/Blu-Ray release of the infamous movie 'Deadpool' for this. I loved it when I watched it in the theaters and I loved it when I got it on DVD to watch. Couple that with the rapidly approaching Season 2 finale of 'The Flash(2014)' television series and my muse was interested enough to prompt me to start typing.

Note 2: This will essentially be a merger of the X-Men movie-verse and the Amazing Spider-man movie-verse with some elements of the mainstream comic book universe. The elements of the mainstream Marvel Earth-616 universe will be dimensional counterparts/analogs so don't expect them to be precisely like the ones in the canon comic book titles. The same for any elements I choose to incorporate from Arrow-verse where the television shows 'Arrow' and 'The Flash' take place. The former is intended to just be a base for characters, organizations and locations that were never shown on the big screen whether through cameo or text.

Note 3: If you want to make suggestions on which actors or actresses should play certain characters and have not done so already in existing movies then please sent them my way. It helps me write if I have a visual aid to work with.

 _ **If One is Good Then Two Must Be…**_

 _ **Nekhel Municipality, Sinai Peninsula, Egypt**_

 _ **M.F.O. Base close to The**_ _ **Fortress of an-Nekhel**_

 _ **Xander's POV**_

"OKAY, PEOPLE, LISTEN UP 'CAUSE I'M NOT GOING TO REPEAT MYSELF!" he yelled at the top of his lungs to cut through the idle chit-chat that had been filling the room.

Immediately everyone went quiet and looked at where he was standing beyond a podium with excellent levels of attention. Not surprising since he'd been a founding member of the New Council and one of its chief troubleshooters for the past fifteen years. That bit of information in your file made all kinds of people respect you, especially since he only had one eye and the life expectancy of most people in his line of work was five years at best. Sure, the pencil pushers and desk jockeys of the Council could easily look forward to becoming grandparents but for people who worked in the field, five was the most you could hope for. It was due to his seniority and the fact that the current problem was happening in his proverbial back yard that he'd been put in charge of the operation, with his trusty XO standing by his side.

"For the past six months there've been reports from branch offices around the world of major thefts of G-class artifacts from various temples, tombs and hideaways. For those of you not keeping up to date on your classification words, G-class artifacts are items with strong connections to various gods and goddesses in their region's pantheon," he said as he used a clicker to cycle through pictures of the items stolen on a flat screen TV to his right. "Some were even made by the attached deity personally and presented as a gift for their human worshippers. Without exception, all G-class artifacts are considered to be in the same weight class as conventional nuclear armaments."

"If they're that big a deal, then why didn't we have them under lock and key?" one of the Slayers in the seats asked, sounding like it was a screw up on the part of the branch offices.

"They were, Hicks," he replied, giving her a good 'do not speak poorly of your comrades' look. "Every one of these artifacts had ancient wards and more than a few booby traps set up around them in order to keep treasure hunters or grave robbers away. Considering that this is the first time those artifacts have been successfully stolen, I'd say they were all pretty impressive. Wouldn't you?"

Dana nodded her head in the affirmative at the question.

"Naturally when the first theft occurred six months ago, all branch offices were asked to keep an eye out for the stolen item as well as ask around to see if any of their sources knew anything. When the second artifact was stolen less than a month later, Head Watcher Giles became concerned that someone was trying for a complete set of artifacts or at least trying to get as many as possible," he said before clicking to an image he knew would put a choke hold on the audience's attention. "As a result, all branches were ordered to monitor some locations known to harbor G-class artifacts while in other cases two full Slayer teams were told to camp out around the only known access points that'd lead to them. This… this is a picture of what happened to the Slayer teams told to guard the 'Statue of Zeus at Olympia'."

It was an image he'd first seen in a briefing folder he'd received twenty-four hours after the attack in question had happened. It still made him shudder; the number of times he'd seen such scenes of brutality and bloodshed on this level could be counted on one hand with a finger or two left over. The image showed a large cave with various carvings and statues arrayed about and prior to the battle that'd taken place it probably would've been very impressive.

Too bad a liberal use of explosives and high caliber bullets mangled most of it before the battle ended it.

"Two teams of Slayers led by Watcher Wells were in charge of guarding the statue but the main branch building lost contact with them just before midnight. As per protocol all attempts were made to reestablish contact but when that failed four Slayer teams were dispatched to investigate with members of M-Division as backup. Total travel time to target location: thirty-five minutes," he said before holding his hand up. "Yes, I know we've got teleportation circles that can get us just about anywhere in the blink of an eye but the same wards meant to keep thieves out made popping into existence in the statue chamber impossible. When they arrived all but one member of the protection detail as dead and the survivor only stayed alive long enough to give us something she'd ripped off the sleeve of her killer."

Another click and an image of a patch with bits of torn fabric around the edges came up.

A bloody thumbprint showed the price of obtaining this vital clue.

The patch itself was fairly simple, showing a golden sun at the top with lines coming down from it and joining to featureless figures and at the bottom was your typical globe design of the planet Earth.

"Some kind of cult?" Hudson asked, her face scrunched up in puzzlement.

"Pretty much. They call themselves the Army of the Powers," he replied, letting a bit of bitter anger seep into his words. "Long story short, they consider themselves to be soldiers in service to the Powers That Be and are fanatically devoted to them. As far as they're concerned, the PTB can do no wrong and anyone who doesn't grovel in subservience towards them are sinners of the worst kind."

"But aren't we supposed to be the soldiers of the PTB? Slayers, I mean?" Gorman asked, sounding like she didn't quite understand.

"Officially we are and the fact that the PTBs still send Slayer dreams would indicate that, while we've torched a couple dozen of their plans since Sunnydale, we're still on the celestial payroll," he replied, looking to the dark-skinned Slayer. "Unfortunately the Army of the Powers are of a different opinion when it comes to us. As far as they're concerned we're traitors and blasphemers that should be subjected to weeks of torture before being sent straight to hell. According to Head Watcher Giles, the Army has always been a problem in one form or another but, up until ten years ago, they've never taken up arms against us. It's more been a case of propaganda and trying to turn various countries against us. That all changed when this man…"

With a click a slightly blurry picture of a fifty-something man came up on the projection screen.

"…split off from the main cult and decided to take a decidedly more violent approach to things. Basically he wants to wipe the world clean of all the faithless, us included, and build a paradise entirely in the service of the Powers That Be. At first he and those who believe in him would just attack Slayer teams in the field or try to sneak explosives into branch buildings. Fortunately, thanks to Head Wicca Rosenberg and myself, we actually learned from the mistakes of the Old Council and made sure explosives of any sort couldn't even get close to a Council building." He used the clicker to cycle through images of known Army members. "This is the first time that they've gone after magical artifacts of any classification. We figure they considered using tools crafted by anyone other than the Powers That Be to be sacrilege."

"Could someone be trying to set us up?" Vasquez asked, sounding suspicious at this last bit of news. "Trying to make it look like this Army cult is behind the thefts when it's really someone else?"

"Head Watcher Giles thought that, too, which was why he'd ordered our intelligence gathering teams to put out some feelers to see if anyone we now who'd want the artifacts was in contact with the Army. No bites. In fact, most of the sources within the various evil factions willing to talk with us made it pretty clear that their bosses wanted nothing to do with the PTBs boot kissers," he replied, privately feeling skeptical about some of the sources' sincerity. "So, until Council Intelligence finds something that says otherwise, we're going with the assumption that the Army is acting on its own and is responsible for the thefts."

"Any idea what they want with the artifacts?" Apone asked from her seat while absentmindedly running her favorite blade up and down a sharpening stone.

"One, and none of you are going to like it," he replied before bringing up the final picture on the screen. "On their own each artifact would be more than enough to do some serious damage to the Council, so there wouldn't be any need for the others. This told the eggheads back home that whatever they were planning was bigger in scale than blowing up a few branch buildings across the globe. It wasn't until the latest theft that they came across this scroll in the Old Council archives.

"Apparently, centuries ago, the PTB called a meeting of the various storm-affiliated deities to discuss the likely future of humanity. Most came but a few were still bitter over the decree restricting the level of interaction deities could have with mortals and basically gave the divine equivalent of the middle finger. The issue that apparently needed discussing was the precognitive visions and portents that'd popped up indicating that humanity could very well become strong enough one day to blow up the planet," he said, basically rehashing what he'd been told by Willow over the phone. "A proposal was put on the table by one of the Powers that the slate be wiped clean. Gather up a few of the more compliant humans, enough to restart the race, and then wipe the planet clean. Fortunately for all of us the plan was never enacted since enough of the deities and Powers believed in a 'wait and see' approach to keep the switch from being thrown."

"Let me guess: they made this doomsday weapon but never activated it," Amanda Dallas said, sounding like she knew the direction things would be going.

"Got it in one, Dallas. While the vote kept it from being used, they still thought it was a good idea to put it together and then hide it just in case after 'waiting and seeing' it turned out that mankind really should be wiped out," he said with a nod towards the Texan Slayer. "In fact it's right below the Fortress of an-Nekhel that to those in the know is a focal point for the local ley lines. A combo of 'nothing is here' spells and 'amnesia' wards have kept anyone from finding it but, based on how lucky they've been at the other G-class sites, we're pretty sure they'll get to where they want to go eventually."

"What do the bookworms think'll happen if these idiots actually manage to turn it on?" Hudson asked, sounding like she didn't think it'd go that far but wanted to know anyway.

"Pretty much your civilization ending global thunder and lightning storm. If you'd been born far back enough I woulda referred to the movie 'The Day After Tomorrow' as a solid example but since you haven't, I'll just say that we DEFINITELY don't want them to turn that thing on." A healthy amount of fear what Giles had described to him about what'd happen if they failed made remembering it easy. "So here's the plan: the gear is melee weapons and close quarters firearms. Body armor usually reserved for demons capable of punching holes in armored trucks. FM goggles for everyone. We go in pairs of two and keep our eyes open for little gifts to keep out tailgaters. We find the Army members, we capture whoever looks important and terminate anyone not important. If my patience wears out we plant the C4 that'll be in your equipment pouches on anything important or load bearing before hauling ass out of there and pressing the button. Questions?"

"What if they're already in the process of turning it on? What then?" Apone asked casually though he could tell that she was paying close attention for the answer.

"That is where second in command Summers here comes in. She was Head Watcher Giles' protégé for almost ten years before being assigned to the African branch. If the doomsday device is revving up, she'll be the one to shut it down. Our job will be to keep the army members off of her so she can do her job and, once they're handled, be the manual labor moving one thing or carefully extracting the other thing," he replied, turning to Dawn with a confident grin. "If she can't shut it down herself, she'll be able to keep things contained until our backup arrives."

"Backup?" Hicks asked with a little annoyance.

The Slayer never had liked having backup since to her it implied that people didn't think she had the goods to get the job done from the beginning.

"Me and the top brass hope that fixing the situation will just mean turning statues and stepping on specific squares in the floor in the right order," he said, hoping this smoothed things over. "However there's a chance that it'll require someone who's mastered the ways of magic. Plus there's a chance that all our activity might attract attention of the shady type, so bringing in another group of Slayers would be a good thing."

This calmed down Hicks, though he'd bet good money that she'd do everything she could to make sure the whole mess was cleaned up with a pretty red bow on top by the time the backup arrived.

"Grab your gear and meet us at the APC in ten," he said, looking at every member of his Slayer team in turn. "MOVE OUT!"

Without hesitation each Slayer stood up before heading for the door so they could get to the mini-armory that'd been unloaded from the plane that'd brought them here. He and Dawn would be following them in a bit but first he had to ask an important question.

"You think we'll make it out of this in one piece?" he asked, turning to face Dawn.

"We've survived annual armageddons, just about every evil heavy hitter on the planet and Buffy's deadly attempts at cooking," Dawn said with a smile on her face. "These psychos couldn't kill us if they tried."

"Damn straight!" he said, letting the blonde's optimism infect him.

With that the two of them followed the Slayers out the door ready to bring the hurt to the bad guys and save the world.

Again.

 _ **The**_ _ **Fortress of an-Nekhel**_

 _ **Dawn's POV**_

"Someone want to tell me why we didn't get here BEFORE they went underground?" Dallas asked through the throat mikes as the team proceeded carefully down the stone steps that led underground. "If they're ahead of us then we're playing catch up with no idea how much lead time they have."

"We didn't get here ahead of them because someone tipped off the Egyptian government about what was happening and they figured out that I'd be taking point on this operation," Xander replied, sounding a little exasperated. "It took some time to convince them that I'd do everything I could to keep any damage to their precious fortress to a minimum. As a result our plane wasn't cleared to enter Egyptian airspace for a while, giving the army their head start."

"Why do they have a bug up their butt about you?" Hudson asked with casual curiosity.

"It was about five years after we took over running the Council that Xan led a team into one of the pyramids to stop the resurrection of a vamp that'd been sealed up inside along with the pharoh who was the bloodsucker's figurehead. Too bad there were way more vamps there than Xander expected there to be and it was all the Slayers with him could do to tie up the minions so he could go after the head," she replied before he could close the lid on the subject. "Xander's report on what happened is a little vague but one thing everyone saw was that it ended with a large part of the pyramid caving in on itself and a lot of artifacts being blown to pieces. Ever since then the Egyptian government has made it clear that if anything happens that requires Council involvement, they're to send ANYONE but Xander to handle it."

"Shit! You blew up a pyramid?" Hudson sounded both impressed and incredulous. "No wonder they don't want you anywhere near another cultural landmark."

"It was not my fault! The vamp mummy had some major mojo chops and my P-90 was doing shit against him!" Xander protested just like she knew he would. "So I went with the only other weapon I had with me."

"How'd you avoid getting buried?" Apone asked, sounding curiously amused.

"Set the timer on the C4 for ten seconds, slapped it on some jars and lured Mister Wrappings right next to it before running like hell," Xander replied, sounding like it was still a stressful memory. "I managed to only just clear the last of the tunnels before they came down."

"Did the C4 do its job?" Vasquez asked, interested in hearing the conclusion.

"Yep. The vamp might be good with the mojo but ground zero to five pounds of C4 will kill just about anything," Xander replied with pride in being able to take down such a threat on his own.

"I still think those jars you stuck the C4 on had to have been filled with lamp oil or something," she said, adding in her own two cents. "Five pounds of C4 is not enough to cause that much damage on its own."

"Who cares? I went, I saw, I kicked ass!" Xander said, sounding like he didn't care about the particulars.

Point.

As they neared the bottom of the stairs Xander employed a series of hand signals that had long since become common knowledge in the Council. They'd been harder to learn for some people than others (#cough# Buffy #cough#) but their value became apparent quickly when stealth was needed around demons with really good hearing. The ones Xander was using at the moment basically said that they'd be advancing two by two with each set covering the ones that came next until the first became last, after which the new last ones could advance forward. He'd also told them to switch to the custom lens on their goggles that'd been magically modified to detect arcane energy and certain spell ingredients. She remembered when he'd compared the goggles to the ones worn by one Sam Fisher from the 'Splinter Cell' videogames and she had to admit they were almost identical save for the fact that the lenses didn't give off green light. The modified lens couldn't pick up everything arcane and in a magic rich environment they were pretty much useless, but for now they'd be able to warn them of any booby traps the army might've laid out behind themselves.

She was feeling an odd combination of cautious patience and anxiousness as they followed Xand's orders and made their way to where the doomsday chamber was located. She knew that they needed to move with caution so as not to trip over any traps but she was in no mood to see the world end when, with a little extra haste, the team she was on coulda prevented it. Still, she trusted Xander implicitly, even if he kept turning down her offers to become Missus Harris.

You'd think over twenty years of effort would've paid off sooner rather than later but it hadn't. Some might even say she should've given up and looked for someone a lot less resistant. What they didn't realize was that she couldn't see herself making it work with someone who wasn't in the know about demons and vampires. However, when it came to a list of available bachelors in the Council, most of them were old enough to be her uncle or were subordinates, so she'd chosen to stick to the one person who fit her criteria and she knew it.

In fact, if it hadn't been for this mission coming out of nowhere, she'd had a plan for breaking past his 'N-O spells NO' barrier but now it'd have to be put on hold.

Another good reason for giving these PTB cultists a thorough ass kicking besides the whole wanting to end the world bit.

It took them about ten minutes before they spotted light coming from a doorframe about fifteen meters ahead and, judging from its violent nature, she'd bet good money that they'd hit pay dirt. Looking to Xander, she saw him give the hand signals to remove their goggles and proceed cautiously towards the doorframe, likely so they could peek inside to see how far along things were. If the light show signified the beginning of the activation spell then they were in time to stop things before it hit the point of no return. If they were minutes away from the point of no return then they'd need to make quick work of the army members so she could get to work stopping in delaying the grand finale.

Once Xander was next to the doorframe he took out a simple mirror on a thin extendable rod and slowly put it in the light until it'd give him the best view of the room. With a few nudges he could get it to turn to the left, turn to the right and then straight ahead without exposing himself too much. It took a minute before he pulled it back in and began drawing a crude representation of the room's interior in the sand that covered floor. From what she could make out there was a half circle shaped pit on the far side of the room with a walkway leading to a central platform with some kind of table or pedestal on it. If the little dots he put in seemingly random places were people then there were three people on the platform and four on either side of doorframe, likely standing guard. Xander then gave the hand signal for Apone and Dallas to take the cult members on the right side of the pit before directing Hicks and Hudson to take the ones on the left. He then instructed Vasquez to stay by the door and support whoever wound up needing it.

That left just her and Xan to make it across the walkway to where the G-class artifacts likely were being used to activate the doomsday device.

 _Sounds like a plan to me,_ she thought as she watched her potential future boyfriend and husband count down from five with his left hand even as his right hand gripped his Atchisson Assault Shotgun.

When he crunched his left hand into a fist he charged into the room, the rest of them followed in close behind. Without looking she could sense the Slayers going to their assigned positions and, as was usually the case, the element of surprise helped in getting the first few shots in. Gunfire and screams of pain erupted into the air, letting her know that the cultists were on the defensive and experiencing significant difficulty, turning the tide in their favor.

Unfortunately the Fates apparently wanted the battle to last longer because a moment later she heard Hudson cursing with a crackle of energy following soon after.

 _Damn! Surprise has worn off and they're starting to fight back,_ she thought even as she followed Xander across the platform, her own Heckler & Koch MP5 at the ready.

She laid down cover fire as they approached the ones on the platform, more to keep them from completing any chants needed to fire off combat spells than anything else. She took care not to hit the pedestal since, even from her current distance, she could see at least three of the stolen artifacts, with the rest likely right behind them. She'd already worked out with Giles what the cultists intended to do with them because it made all kinds of sense once you thought about it. Given the global ramifications of activating the doomsday device there was no way the deities or the PTB were going to let it be possible for just anyone to switch it on. It was likely that it required the divine energy of at least five of the gods and goddesses involved in order to undo whatever locks kept the device inactive. Naturally, getting the real deities to lend their help was impossible, so the army members chose to steal objects imbued with the power of the necessary gods, intending to use them as a workaround.

It was tricky work but Willow said she'd be able to do it and to her that meant that the cultists stood a decent enough chance of pulling it off.

She was all set to take down the cultists on the platform when the universe decided to hand her and Xander a 'gotcha' surprise.

The second they stepped onto the platform, not only did the three people vanish into thin air but an energy barrier popped into existence, effectively trapping them.

Looking at the various artifacts, she waited, expecting them to vanish, but oddly enough they didn't and, when she reached out to touch one of them, she confirmed that it was tangible.

"SHIT!" Xander exclaimed, causing her to turn in time to see him yanking a smoking hand away from the barrier that surrounded them. "We've been played like cheap violin."

"Indeed you have, Mister Harris, though don't take it too hard," a cultured voice said as a robed figure walked through the entrance to the room. "Had I not been informed of your arrival in the area, your attack might well have succeeded."

"Informed?" she asked, not liking the implications of that term.

"Yes, but you'll excuse an old man his entertainment of watching you two attempt to deduce who warned me you were coming," the voice said before the robe's hood was pulled back to reveal a familiar face. "Suffice it to say I was even more surprised than you when they conveyed their warning. Nevertheless, it's proven most fortuitous since it has delivered to me the final ingredient needed to set the world right."

It was the leader of the splinter faction, the one who intended to end the world out of some fanatical devotion to the Powers That Be.

Never mind that the Slayer vision strongly indicated that the PTB wanted this prevented.

"Funny. With everything we've got on you, I expected you to come in ranting like a fire and brimstone preacher telling us we're all going to burn in hell or something," Xander said, using his best skill to buy her time to figure a way out of the mess they were in.

Looking around she could see that of the Slayers that'd come in with them, only Apone, Vasquez and Hicks were still standing, albeit at gunpoint from five armed cult members.

The rest weren't so lucky.

They were on the ground and still with Dallas sporting a bloody hole in her chest while the others were face down, so whatever killed them could not be seen.

So as far as allies went, they had three potential ones but only if their captors were distracted or disoriented enough to give the Slayers the opening they needed to act.

"Yes, well, since you were kind enough to bring us the final ingredient, I decided that being polite was the least I could do," the cult leader said, never losing his casual tone. "Besides, ushering in a rebirth of this grandness requires a certain… dignity."

"So you really think you'll be spared if you turn on this doomsday device? That the Powers That Be will snap their fingers and whisk you away to safety along with anyone who believes as you do?" Xander asked, working to buy her more time.

Looking around the edges of the platform she stood on as well as the specific locations where the mirage men had been located, she tried to spy any clue concerning what sort of magic they were using. Sadly much of the markings her instincts were telling her were connected to the mirages were already half faded, with what remained swiftly following suit. Some of it MIGHT have been ancient Greek but it wasn't something she was willing to bet on just yet. As for the barrier keeping them penned in, it looked like it might've been something that came with the room rather than something the cultists had brought with them. A security precaution left by the deities who built the place? Possibly. However it also meant that her chances of breaking it were not good since it usually took someone like Willow to throw down with beings of godly might.

"I don't expect you or your group to grasp the truth, Mister Harris. You've all made it clear that you have no regard for the guardians of Earth, so I won't waste my breath," the cult leader said with a bit of annoyance. "Besides that, the celestial alignment is nearly upon us and I'd rather not wait for the next one. Begin the ceremony, Brother Timothy."

With that the thugs holding Apone, Vasquez and Hicks hostage began forcing the Slayers to the edge of the pit. From what she could tell, placement of each Slayer was key rather than random and it caused some uneasiness to bubble up inside of her. It only got worse when half of the cult members, including the leader, began to chant in a language that she could only make out bits and pieces of. This was surprising because, where Willow excelled in sorcery, her claim to fame in the Council was languages. She'd worked her ass off for the last twenty years to master every human and demon language she could, with the only ones being out of her reach were the ones that hadn't been spoken in millennia or those that required a piece of demonic anatomy to do right. The fact that she could only make out bits and pieces of what they were saying meant that either they'd somehow learned a language that hadn't been spoken or passed down for thousands of years OR it was something they'd cobbled together themselves from countless known languages.

She didn't know which was the better possibility.

Things took a turn for the worse though when out of nowhere one of the thugs holding the surviving Slayers hostage shot each of them in the back with a round powerful enough to make a golf ball sized hole in their chests. Apone, Vasquez and Hicks had just enough life left in them to look at her and Xander before they fell into the pit of darkness, never to rise again.

"NNOOO!" Xander yelled in grief and rage, slamming his fists once on the barrier before the pain from the shock he received sent him halfway back to rationality.

Human sacrifice or Slayer sacrifice?

She forced her mind to focus on solving the problem rather than the sadness of losing the last of the Slayer team she'd worked with for the last four years. More and more she went through her knowledge of magic, of rituals and of language to piece together the framework of what the cult was doing and how the Doomsday device worked. Thinking about what the man said about them bringing the final ingredient he needed to activate the device, she didn't think the psycho meant Slayers. There were enough of them now, the world over, that snatching five could be done without raising an alarm or tipping one's hand.

No. The only person the Army of the Powers wouldn't have been able to kidnap without bringing a shit storm of trouble down on themselves was… her.

But outside of a very small group of trusted people, no one saw her as anything more than the sister of Buffy Summers and a normal human girl. As far as she knew there hadn't been a single incident since the final battle with Glory to make anyone think that she anything more than human. Yet, if there was some unique element that the cult needed to make their plan work and she had it, then it had to be the energy of The Key. Whether she actually had it or not the cult must believe that she had lingering amounts of it in her body and that it'd be enough to start up the Armageddon engine.

 _If this thing specifically needs Key energy to do its thing then that means it will react to it,_ she thought as she added what she'd managed to find out since her 'birth' about The Key.

The stories about it certainly went back far enough to have been involved in the creation of the doomsday device, even if the references weren't exactly specific. If the place was made to react to Key energy, then maybe, just maybe, she could use that to their advantage and give Xander a chance to turn the tables on the assholes. Moving so she was right behind her future husband, she took her combat knife and cut a bloody slit across her hand and then muttered a quick chant she'd learned from Willow. She wasn't a 'mojo user' as Xander called them, but everyone in the Council knew that some magic didn't require you to be a warlock or a Wicca to use it. This particular chant was meant to temporarily enhance your natural qualities like a sugar and caffeine combo gave you a temporary energy boost. Council field operatives were taught the chant for emergency situations where you needed to run faster than you normally could or had to solve a problem you were just shy of being capable of doing.

In her case she was banking on the possibility that any remaining Key energy would be woken out of dormancy allowing her to make her next play.

"I'M GONNA FUCKIN' KILL YA! ALL OF YOU!" Xander yelled, fury and grief suffocating very word.

She knew he was just play acting at the moment, even if he still felt the loss of their Slayer team. He might not know what she was up to but he still trusted her enough to provide a decent distraction so she could do what she needed to do.

"Unlikely, Mister Harris," the cult leader said even as his minions continued their work. "Once we are finished it's likely that you will be reduced to so much vapor, if that, by the surge in divine energy. I'm not afraid of harmless vapor."

 _You should be,_ she thought as she watched with glee as bits of sparkly blue energy began to manifest on the surface of the blood welling up from the cut she'd created.

Time to turn the tables on the asshole.

 _ **Xander's POV**_

 _Whatever you're doing, Dawn, you'd better hurry up!_ he thought after firing off another distracting promise of a messy death. _I think we're running out of time._

Indeed he had been present at enough major league rituals to recognize the feeling that was building in the atmosphere around him and the glow that the artifacts were beginning to give off couldn't be of the good. They needed to get out of the energy cage surrounding them so he could take out the cultists while Dawn went to work undoing the mojo, or at least slowing it down until Willow arrived. However his two attempts at physically breaking it proved trying to punch or shoot their way free wouldn't work; they'd either ruin their hands or waste ammunition. That meant trying to find an off switch inside the barrier, or at least the mystical equivalent of a maintenance panel that could be opened up so the insides could be tinkered with. That was probably why Dawn had gotten behind him so the Army rejects couldn't see what she was doing.

Hearing the scrape of boot on stone, he took that to mean that the little sister of Buffy Summers was ready to let him in on her plan.

"When I give you the word, Xan, take them down hard and fast. I don't think I'll be able to make the window last very long," Dawn said with enough concern that he could trust what she said.

He just slightly nodded to let her know she'd been heard while just as covertly let his hands slither closer to his automatic shotgun. He had a full drum to work with so there'd be no trouble there, but the range on the thing wasn't the greatest so he'd have to dive through whatever window she provided and get into effective range as swiftly as he could. Hopefully his XO could lob a flash bang close enough to the cultists to distract them so he'd have the time to do his job. Seconds ticked by but, when she slapped him on the back in the classic 'get going' manner, he surged forward towards the cage just in time to see it destabilize with holes forming in it both big and small. The second he found one big enough for him to dive through he did so and, once he'd successfully rolled back to his feet, he sprinted across the walkway as fast as he could. With a smile he watched as Dawn had figured out what he wanted her to do as a black canister flew past him to land in the midst of the cultists. With a boom and a flash all hostiles were disoriented, blinking their eyes rapidly as though that might speed up the clearing of their vision.

The second he felt he was close enough he began to fire off shots to parts of the body that he intended to be instant kills. The doubt came from the fact that some of the Slayer teams that'd been assigned to protect the artifacts were former students of his and had therefore been armed with modern military hardware. Indeed, after the first decade or so you could tell who a Slayer got her training from by what weapons she preferred and how effective she was with them. While he didn't veto melee weaponry altogether, he made sure the Slayers he taught knew their way around Green Beret gear and weapons. Buffy's students tended to stick with what the blonde Slayer was familiar with, plus a few additions like communications gear and the goggles.

If these cultists managed to take down some of his girls then they either had surprise on their side and the skill to make the most of it, or some hidden advantage that the Slayers didn't catch onto in time.

His hunch was proven right when, instead of bloody holes appearing in the chests of the cultists, blue energy fields popped into existence a little under a foot from their bodies, stopping the shots cold. Likely the strength of the field was proportional to the kinetic energy being directed at it or the idiots would be able to walk, never mind pick anything up. However there was almost always a small list of flaws to energy fields like that and he had the perfect solution for it. Grabbing two blocks of C4 from his vest, he slapped in some quickie timers as he liked to call them before throwing them into the midst of the cultists who looked to be almost recovered from the flash bang grenade.

Too little, too late as the saying went.

While the fields protecting the cultists did stop any tangible objects that'd been accelerated by the blast as well as most of the fire, the concussive force given off by the explosions were another story entirely. Like a show he used to watch pointed out there were various layers to an explosion and, as the shock patches showed, a person could be spared the flames and the shrapnel only to die from the air pressure. As such two clumps of C4 going off did some terrible things to their bodies that the protective fields couldn't handle and down they went.

Bringing up his automatic shotgun, he cautiously advanced on the hostiles, checked the status of each of them without providing any that might be playing possum an opening to kill him with. Some were dead, blood leaking out of their eyes, nose and mouth, while others were just unconscious but likely in need of medical treatment. The only one that was still conscious was the leader and for a moment he was VERY tempted to change that as revenge for the deaths of the Slayers he'd lost, but the possibility that the bastard might know how to stop what he'd started stayed his hand.

"Okay, asshole, here's the situation: your men are down and you're in no shape to put up a fight. If you want to live to continue serving the Powers That Be, you'll tell me how to shut all this down," he growled as he hauled the cult leader up by the collar of the robe the man was wearing. "'Cause if you don't, I'll kill you right now and I'm thinking that being killed by a blasphemous sinner will keep you from passing on to whatever afterlife you'd want to visit."

"Fool! The Powers That Be know their true servants from the faithless!" the cult leader gasped out, indicating an injury that'd hinder breathing. "No matter what you do to me, I have earned a place in paradise! The Earth will be swept clean of the ungrateful wretches who think that they know better than those who sit above! Only the faithful will be spared and, once the planet has been returned to the paradise it once was, I shall live again to bask in its splendor! Too bad you won't be able to say the same, eh?"

"Then here's your express ticket there!" he growled before pushing the man hard to the ground, pressing the barrel of his shotgun to the forehead and pulling the trigger.

At such close range the protective energy field was incapable of protecting its user.

"Looks like we're going to have to settle this the hard way, Dawn," he said, feeling that the threat was over with the cultists either dead or unconscious. "Any-"

That was as far as he got before his eyes settled on the sight of Dawn still behind the imprisoning energy barrier she'd only recently helped him escape. He was puzzled as to why she hadn't made her own escape but it was only when he squinted to see past the energy of the prison that he spied the truth.

Dawn had somehow aged ten years in what was probably ten minutes.

"What've you done, Dawn!?" he asked, sprinting to the very edge of the prison field.

"Looks like the energy field is… quite hungry for Key energy," Dawn replied, sounding like she was rapidly losing strength. "Took more than I thought to get you out. Thought… thought it'd stop drinking when took my hand off but I guess I thought wrong."

"Fine. If breaking contact isn't enough then we get you out of there and try putting some distance between you and it. Everything has a range so we just have to get you out of its range," he said as he began looking everywhere for something that looked like an off switch or something that'd help him get Dawn out.

"No time. This thing's building to critical mass," Dawn said with a shake of her head. "Now that it's draining me I can feel revving up to firing strength. Gotta… gotta try to contain the energy or at least… reduce it."

"Willow can do that!" he said, not wanting to hear anything that didn't involve getting his XO to safety. "She'll probably be here in ten minutes, max!"

"Too bad… this thing… is gonna go off… in nine then," Dawn said as she visibly aged another ten years.

"SHIT!SHIT!FUCKIN'SHIT!" he yelled as he tried to pull a rabbit out of his proverbial hat just like he had so many times before.

No matter where he looked he couldn't see anything around the platform that looked like an off switch but then he realized that the cult leader must've activated it from outside and so he sprinted for the door. Once he was outside he put his tri-lens goggles back on and began to look like any kind of switch or panel or magical thingy that indicated it was connected to something active. Seeing a large symbol glowing the same color as the barrier trapping Dawn, he reached for his throat mike.

"Okay I've got a big symbol that looks like a very stylized double-u or a trident glowing the same color as the barrier and a series of smaller symbols pulsing around it," he said, hoping Dawn still had the strength to help him. "Ideas on how to shut off the barrier?"

"How many… smaller symbols…?" Dawn asked, sounding like she was having trouble speaking at normal volume.

"Uhhhh… about the same as the number of artifacts on the pedestal next to you," he replied after a quick count.

"Must mean… they're linked… to the… energy field," Dawn said, sounding weak and tired. "If we… can get… enough of the artifacts out… and away, it might… weaken the barrier enough."

Made sense.

Considering how important the artifacts were to psycho leader and his minions, they wouldn't have left them out in the open unless that's where they needed to be for the ritual. Get them far away and the entire ceremony should collapse in on itself while freeing Dawn at the same time. Only one problem with that plan…

"You sure you have enough in you for that?" he asked, letting his concern and fear show. "Somehow I don't think Buffy's gonna be happy about having to change the bed pan of her senile, grey haired little sister."

"No other choice," Dawn said before taking a breath that didn't fill him with confidence. "Now… get back here… not much time…"

Not hesitating he ran back into the room and across the walkway as swiftly as he could but when he arrived a part of him realized that he wasn't going to get the happy ending he wanted. In the time since he'd left the room to find a way to free Dawn she'd aged another ten years, looking more and more like a grandmother rather than a thirty-something woman with decades still ahead of her. It took her a moment to notice that he'd arrived but once she did she picked up one of the artifacts on the table before walking over to him. With a hand that was still bleeding, mixed with visible arcs of blue energy, she pressed the wound against the barrier, causing it to rapidly lose stability. Unfortunately, against his most heartfelt desire, none of the holes that popped into existence were big enough to get her out. With effort usually reserved for carrying an armful of books Dawn tossed the artifacts towards him and reflexively more than anything else he caught them.

Briefly looking down he could see that one of them was a small box with gold colored metal covering all its edges and inside he could see what looked to be electricity of the same color vibrating at its center. Another was a staff with an ornate copper head that would've looked at home in the hands of a Japanese monk.

Looking back at Dawn, he watched as she stumbled backwards until the only thing keeping her standing was the pedestal she was half sitting on. He could tell right away that disrupting the barrier was taking a lot out of her and, while it didn't seem to be accelerating her rapid aging more, he still didn't like it. So you could imagine his agitating when she turned to pick up another artifact, a large pouch filled with metal fragments, before unsteadily making her way back to him.

"NO! Dawn this is enough!" he yelled, trying to get her to stop and not do what he knew she was about to do.

"No… it isn't… gotta remove… at least one more… for this to… work…" Dawn said, somehow conveying the same Summers stubbornness she always had despite her quickly fading vigor and strength.

Before he could say more she once more pressed her cut hand against the barrier and then, as though she knew her strength would wane, tossed the pouch through to him quickly. This time, though, while she still stumbled backwards, she had not the strength or reflexes to grab hold of the table in time to keep from falling to the ground. The crack he heard and her howl of pain told him that the fall had resulted in at best a fractured bone, if not a broken one, causing his heart to spasm with pain in turn.

"Dawn…DAWN…!?" he exclaimed, unable to contain his emotions any longer

"You… you got… all I can… give you, Xan…" Dawn rasped as she slowly laid herself down onto the ground. "You gotta go… gotta get some distance… from here…"

"But… but you… I…" he stuttered, unable to get anything coherent out with the mess his emotions were at the moment.

"You've done… all you can…" Dawn rasped out as her increasingly milky eyes locked on his. "Now… run… Xander. RUN!"

Knowing it was something he had to do, he still felt extreme emotional pain as he got back to his feet and began to sprint back the way the team had come as fast as he could go. A part of him probably clung to the delusion that he could somehow run from the pain of knowing that Dawn, sweet Dawn Patrol, was going to die and there was nothing he could do to stop it from happening. The pain, the adrenaline pumping through his veins, both shot up and down his body with every step as he tried to fulfill Dawn's last request.

He knew not how much time he had left before the device went off but, when he saw black sky dotted with twinkling stars, he felt like he was entering the home stretch. When he reached the surface he made for the main entrance of the fortress and moved, determined to get through it before the device he'd failed to shut down fired. He didn't know how big a bang it'd make with the artifacts in his arms no longer in position but he wasn't going to take any chances.

He kept running.

It was as he got to probably the thirty yard mark that he heard a sound that had him immediately look for the source and when he found it hope blossomed from what had been a heart drowning in sorrow. Getting larger with every second was a troop helicopter and, even at its current distance, he could see the familiar insignia of the Council on the front.

Willow and Buffy! They'd arrived!

 _Maybe it's not too late!_ he thought as a smile exploded onto his face. _With the triumphant trio together, there's nothing we can't do!_

Too bad it was right then that some higher power decided to pop his bubble of hope.

With a blast that was far quieter than it should've been, a maelstrom of energy erupted from beneath the fortress, going up into the stratosphere at first but then expanding outward like a tidal wave. He only caught a glimpse of it before the energy overtook him, bombarding his body and mind with sensations, only half of which he could put labels to. Not only that but, if he wasn't so thoroughly distracted, he'd also notice that the artifacts in his arms were vibrating at an ever-increasing speed and power. By the time his body reached the limits of what it could feel before his nervous system would turn into kindling, the artifacts could no longer handle the shaking going on. All at once they shattered, releasing the energies placed within them long, long ago by beings as far above humans as humans were above animals.

In any other case the released energy would've obliterated everything around it but those who knew Xander Harris knew arcane energy regardless of the source never behaved as expected. For a moment it looked as though the divine energy would follow the laws of magic and science by shooting away from ground zero, destroying everything in their path eventually leaving the plane of existence to return to the god or goddess they belonged to. That was when things took a turn capable of giving everyone short of the Almighty a serious case of whiplash. Instead of flowing outward the energies instead chose to flow into him, merged with him, causing his veins to suddenly become energy conduits that glowed bright enough to be visible through the skin from time to time. Like a series of Christmas lights beneath the skin, light appeared then disappeared with no visible pattern and then something happened that only those on the approaching chopper with superhuman vision would be able to see and remember.

Golden lightning began to pop out of Xander's skin like the pus from a popped pimple but, instead of ending right there, the lightning began to take on the characteristics of streamers in the wind, fluttering this way and that at erratic speeds. If there'd only been one or two it wouldn't have been a big thing but one became three, became nine, and then became a helluva lot more. Before long there were so many holes in the man's skin that it began to peel away from the body like dried bark before disintegrating into blue specks before vanishing entirely. It would have been horrible to watch had this kept up right until there was nothing left, so it was a small mercy to both those watching, as well as Xander himself, when some higher being decided to skip right to the finale.

In a spectacular show of arcane energy the man who'd fought the demonic and protected the world dissolved into blue and golden specks before vanishing entirely. His clothes didn't make the trip, though, and dropped to the ground where the momentum of his running carried them.

Still, his efforts and the efforts of one Dawn Summers were not without meaning.

By removing those few artifacts from the chamber, the doomsday device created by the storm gods so many years ago could not reach any further. It coughed and sputtered as it tried to carry out its designed function but, when it found that it could no longer do so, the system spun down, returning the divine machine to dormancy.

The world was safe once more.

And all that had been lost were a team of Slayers, a brilliant woman and one of the bravest men known to mankind.

It was debatable whether it could be considered a fair trade.

 _ **Buffy's POV**_

"Willow, get to where Xander… where Xander was last seen," she ordered, forcing herself into General Buffy mode to keep from breaking down. "I want to know if he's… dead… or if he still might be kicking somewhere. If it's the former… we'll hunt down the rest of this cult and shut them down for good. If it's the latter, get all the info you can so we can bring him back."

"R-right. On it!" Willow said before running in the direction where they'd last seen Xander before… before.

The redhead was doing a passable job of keeping her emotions in check but it was likely the faint hope that their friend wasn't dead that was keeping the floodgates closed. If all their work eventually showed that their best friend was dead, then it'd all come crashing down and a storm of vengeance would drop on the Army of the Powers with unheard of fury. If she had any say in the matter, the core Scoobies would get their pound of flesh and she had a feeling that, despite his advanced age, Giles would surpass them all. It was no secret that her former mentor saw Xander as a sort of surrogate son, so hearing that he'd… passed on could very well bring out his Ripper side.

"Slayer team two, secure the perimeter and make sure none of those Army bastards are still lurking about. If you find them… use your own judgment on what to do with them," she said, knowing that at least three members of Slayer team two had been taught directly by Xander.

"Slayer team one with me! We're going down there and find out what the hell happened!" she yelled before gripping the Slayer scythe tightly and moving as fast as she could for the fortress.

She knew she should be more cautious, that she should follow the training everyone went through once they started adopting squad tactics and strategies, but all she could think about was: where was Dawn? Her sister hadn't been with Xander when he'd… vanished, so that told her that the man's second in command had to still be down below the fortress. The question was, why? She had long since accepted the fact that her little sister was in love with Xander and had actually been looking forward to the day when the idiot finally stopped fighting it. There was no way that she'd let Xander run away and disappear on his own. Dawn had the same Summers stubbornness as she did and that meant they didn't give up until long after the fat lady finally sung.

Was she hurt? Was she…

NO! She refused to consider that possibility.

Down the stairs she and the team went keeping their senses wide open for any sign of trouble or danger, and once they reached the bottom they began to navigate their way down the corridors to their destination. It was easy to find even without the directions Willow had put together because Xander had apparently been in such a haste to get out of there with whatever he was carrying that his footprints were clear as day on the ground. Before long she entered the room she'd been heading for and what she found was not encouraging: Slayers dead on the ground alongside men she presumed were cultists, also very dead. Looking around, she tried to spot any sign of the blonde head of hair that belonged to her sister done up in the style she'd seen during the vid-chat prior to the beginning of the mission. She looked to her left, to her right but it wasn't until she looked across the walkway leading to a platform on the far side of the room that she spotted something out of place.

She didn't know what it was but it was as good a place as any to go looking for answers.

Moving at a pace just under a jog she crossed the walkway but it was when she was almost at the platform that her movement slowed to a crawl. Laying on the platform was the uniform that all Council field operatives wore when they went into battle. Not long after the reforming of the Council Xander had put forth a motion to create from scratch a proper field uniform for the Slayers and any Watchers. It was specifically designed to be resistant to claws, teeth, corrosive organic liquids and a multitude of other things a person would encounter fighting demons and vampires. She could also see on the ground around the uniform a MP5 as well as other bits and pieces that could be found in a portable Slayer armory.

However it was when she spotted something golden amidst the dirt that the uniform seemed to be laying on that a dark feeling sparked to life in the very bottom of her stomach.

Stretching out her right arm, she was almost at war with herself, her instincts against her conscious mind, but still she pressed forward. With gentle care usually shown to fragile eggs she scooped up the gold from the dirt and pulled it closer to her eyes so she could see what it was. At first she thought it was just some common gold chain but as the dirt filtered through her fingers a locket appeared connected to that gold chain that was VERY familiar in appearance. With a hand that was almost trembling with rising emotion she opened the locket and on the inside she found two pictures that shattered her composure.

The first picture was of her mother that was taken at a Christmas party that'd been held at their house in Sunnydale the year before she died.

The second picture was of both her and Dawn the day her little sister got her doctorate in ancient languages.

She'd been so proud of her sister that day.

Now she would never see if Dawn could outdo that day somehow.

She would never see her little sister do anything.

Overwhelming grief and sadness washed over her causing her to not even be aware of the Slayer team that'd come in with her rushing to her side. She didn't notice them looking over her shoulder and seeing the evidence that explained why she was in such a terrible state. However they did notice when she changed first with a spark and then with a growing heat that made even the most experienced among them back up a couple of steps.

Where did this heat come from?

The murderous rage that was quickly consuming her every thought that's where.

The so-called Army of the Powers was going to die and die as thoroughly as possible.

And she was going to be there to see every last one of them breathe their last breath… one way or another.

 _ **A Higher Realm of Existence**_

"Well, that'll sweep away those idiots who think they're doing OUR will," Power One said as she waved her hand and dispersed the image of the increasingly homicidal Slayer. "Activate the Omega Storm? Ridiculous! If they'd done that the Almighty would've held us responsible and NO ONE would have survived that."

"Indeed. We might seem heavy handed and heartless but we're not fools," Power Two said with a disappointed shake of his head. "The Almighty made it very clear that human free will was paramount. We can manipulate environmental factors and we can color our messages as best we can without lying or omitting anything, but that's it. Any more than that and the Creator of All would sanction our collective asses or worse, turn us into humans."

"A fate worse than death considering what they see as entertaining these days," Power Three said, disgust in her voice. "So what shall we do about THEM? You know they had something to do with Alexander Harris' current predicament. That much arcane and divine energy being released should've been a one way ticket to oblivion, yet THEY intervened."

"They likely consider it their right since it was their divine energy that had been released, so they could do with it what they willed," Power Four said as he sighed in exasperation. "You know they all look for even the tiniest opportunity to defy the Separation Protocols and get away with it. They might abide by it out of respect for the Almighty but that doesn't mean they will pass up a chance to get a taste of their 'Old Days'."

"True. At least they abided by the ruling that any empowered mortal that could imperil the balance is to be expelled from this dimension. I would have preferred that anomalous human to have been cast into limbo forever but the dimension they chose is satisfactory enough," Power One said, sounding like she was willing to let this defiance slide. "Who'll notice one more superhuman there?"

"But what if he returns?" Power Two asked with concern., "With the power he's been given and the way it's been arranged by THEM, it is not inconceivable that he could find his way back here."

"You worry too much, my old friend," Power Three said dismissively. "It's called the multiverse for a reason, after all. The number of dimensions he'd have to pass through to get back here are numerous, too numerous for him to manage in his lifetime and, besides that, he lacks the senses needed to properly navigate the ether in between. It'd be as much random luck as anything else."

"Assuming he doesn't have help," Power Two said with a bit of a growl. "I find it suspicious that the Army's leader was able to get the drop on Harris' team the way they did. It'd be one thing if an official in the Egyptian government was responsible but the mortal's team had equipment that should've been able to detect any magic humans are capable of wielding."

"You think they had higher help?" Power One asked, sounding troubled by that idea.

"Or lower help. The beings of the various hell dimensions and their supreme lord and master know that the Almighty intends to nurture the humans so that they can eventually replace those lost in The Fall. It would be just his style to manipulate fanatics devoted to us into activating the Omega Storm. He gets us in trouble and forces the Creator of All into starting from scratch," Power Two said, not liking the implications his mind was coming up with. "If he's grown bold enough to try something like this, he might do something even grander in the future. We need to send him a message that makes it clear that not only are we on the job but fully capable of foiling whatever he tries."

"I'll get my division working on some options immediately," Power Four said with resolve in his voice. "And if this help came from a higher source?"

"Then we need to discreetly investigate matters in order to identify the culprit," Power Two said with an unhappy frown. "We cannot afford to look weak and divided. Not so much that the other side notices. If we do they won't hesitate to take advantage of the situation to make matters even worse."

"Then perhaps seeing to it that Slayer Summers and her Council stumble across the means to remove a few Wolfram and Hart branches, perhaps?" Power One suggested with a thoughtful tone. "Not enough to spur them into leaving this dimension but enough that it would loosen their hold on the mortal realm a bit."

"Possibly. We'd have to be careful, though," Power three said, sounding wary about the idea. "Push too hard and they'll retaliate in order to restore their damaged reputation."

"It's all about balance, my friend," Power One said confident that they'd be able to come up with an acceptable solution. "Through balance there is harmony."

None of them heard the amused chuckle that came after that statement.

They didn't hear it because while the Almighty might've taught them everything they knew, that didn't mean he taught them all HE knew.

 _ **Earth-131324**_

 _ **New York City, New York**_

 _ **Central Park, Late Evening**_

The Big Apple, the capital of the world, the city that never sleeps and many other nicknames are used to refer to the most famous city in the world.

For those that have lived there all their lives, however, it's simply home since they've long since gotten used to the sights and sounds of it all. Even at a location as famous and well-tended as Central Park most of the people who've lived in the city all their lives only notice its beauty when they're in the mood.

However that all changed when out of nowhere arcs of golden lightning crackled outwards from a central point a full six feet before disappearing. At first it was only three or four bolts but, as the seconds ticked by more emerged until their number equaled the number of spokes in a bicycles wheel and then, in a flash of light, all hell broke loose. A wave of energy that was a mixture of the colors gold, white and blue exploded outwards from the focal point of the phenomena like the shockwave of a massive explosion. Trees bent but did not break, lights flickered, glass shattered and, by the time the energy from the phenomena petered out, everyone from the New York Stock Exchange to Yankee Stadium was at attention. For some it'd simply been a light show accompanied by an unusual sensation but for others their lives would never be the same.

Less than half an hour later police arrived at the starting point of the phenomena, looking to find out what'd happened and why, but all they found was a naked man in his mid-twenties lying in a small crater. Attempts were made to wake the young man but, no matter what was tried, there was no response.

Some of the more hasty police officers just wanted to label him the source of the phenomena and toss him in jail to await trial for all the damage the energy wave had caused. However the more level headed of the detectives won the vote and so the young man was taken to the nearest hospital both to have his wounds tended and to see if they could find out why he wouldn't awaken. After all, they couldn't ask him questions while he was unconscious and if they couldn't ask him questions, they couldn't determine the nature of his involvement in the energy wave.

Evidence and reason before judgment was the order of the day.

 _ **New York-Presbyterian Hospital**_

 _ **Two Hours Later**_

"So what do you think?" she asked as she looked through the observation window of the room the suspect was in.

"Science project gone wrong, maybe?" Terri replied after taking a sip of her coffee. "Thief who stole something from Stark Enterprises or some other big company?"

"Maybe, but I haven't heard anything about high profile robberies in the last twenty-four hours," she said, knowing that if something had happened, one C.E.O. or another would be raising hell.

"All that means is that whatever our mystery man might've stolen was so top secret that they didn't want the fact that it'd been stolen to be public record," Terri said with her usual cynical attitude. "Top secret or something that violated several laws."

"Not every company is trying to pull a fast one, Terri," she said with a half roll of her eyes.

While she respected her partner and even called her friend, the woman didn't trust anyone with more money or more power than she had. To her, once you left middle class and arrived in high class your morals took a nosedive. While her time on the force had given her a somewhat skeptical viewpoint of the world, she was still more of an optimist than Terri was. To her, giving people the benefit of a doubt was a prerequisite for being a cop until forensic evidence conclusively proved they were unworthy of it.

"How do you know? It's a dog eat dog corporate world out there," Terri said, not flinching even a little. "If it's not the C.E.O.s looking to fatten their wallets, it's the people that work for them trying to one up their competition or retire to Hawaii."

"Well, until we get an I.D. on this guy, let's keep any speculation to a minimum," she said, trying to keep things on track. "We've sent his prints and DNA sample to the labs for testing. It'll take a while but we'll get the truth."

"That's what I wanted to hear," came a voice she'd both been expecting and dreading. "The Mayor's up in arms over this and the media's in a feeding frenzy. The sooner we can put a name and a pair of handcuffs to someone, the better I'll feel."

Commissioner Joseph Loeb.

A part of her respected the man the same way she'd respect anyone who'd been a part of the N.Y.P.D. for as long as Loeb had. The guy was proud of being a cop and would go to bat for anyone wearing a badge, no matter how risky it was to his career. However the man had it in for anyone he didn't classify as human or made the N.Y.P.D. look bad in the eyes of the press. That meant that mutants, self-styled super heroes who got their powers from god knew where and people like Tony Stark who built themselves a super suit of armor. From the commissioner's point of view the only people who should be chasing down criminals and saving lives were the normal people with lawfully provided police badges showing everyone their authority. Anyone else was either a reckless fool endangering both themselves as well as others or showboats who only cared about themselves and both kinds of people deserving to be locked behind bars.

"What've you got, detectives?" Loeb asked, sounding like he was looking for an official debrief.

"One male, mid-twenties, Caucasian, found at ground zero of the energy phenomena. Alive but completely unresponsive when the local beat cops arrived on the scene. Paramedics arrived and loaded him into the ambulance, all while taking his vitals not to mention looking for a reason for his apparently comatose state," she replied, taking out her notepad and going through what she'd jotted down so far. "Upon arrival doctors took the usual samples while we took his prints. We're still waiting on those. From what the docs say his vitals are all normal. Well, most of the times anyway."

"What do you mean 'most of the time', Greer?" Loeb asked, showing his dislike for ambiguity.

"Since being admitted to the hospital he's had four incidents where his vitals have gone haywire. A few times they even thought he'd flat lined but he came back each time," she replied, not knowing how else to describe what she'd witnessed. "The most interesting thing was that when they first used the paddles in an attempt to get his heart beating again after they thought he'd flat lined."

"What happened?" Commissioner Loeb asked, sounding a little impatient.

"Some residual charge or whatever from what happened in the park fried the paddles and every piece of electronics in the room," she replied, feeling a little worried about how her boss would react.

"He's a mutie?" Loeb asked instantly, taking on an aggressive and hostile posture.

"We don't know that for certain," she replied, hoping to shut down one of the man's rants before it could begin. "You know as well as I do that there are tons of different possibilities when it comes to stuff like that. Tech, science derived super powers and then there's however that guy with the hammer can do what he does. Until we get the lab results back, let's not jump to conclusions."

"Detective Grant, I have been on the force a long, LONG time and I know how it goes. The very insinuation that I would rush to conclusions before we find the evidence to support it is offensive," Loeb said, standing right up to her until they were practically nose-to-nose.

The man also didn't like being treated like someone who'd been sitting behind a desk so long that he'd forgotten what it was like to work the streets.

"That being said, I remember what it was like to have my superiors busting my chops for results when I was already working my ass off," Loeb said, reigning in his hostility a bit. "Keep me posted. When you know it, I want to know it ten seconds later."

"Count on it," she said with a respectful nod.

With that the head of the NYPD turned away and strode off like he had important places to be, which he probably did. Turning to her partner, she decided that with the boss on the warpath to get results as soon as possible, it'd be better to divide the work between the two of them.

"Look, you'd better make the rounds with the local C.E.O.s and see if you can rattle their cages enough to make them honest about any robberies they might've been a bit slow in reporting. Some of them might be business focused but some of them like Stark are geniuses who might already have an idea about what happened," she said, thinking up possibilities about how such efforts could turn out. "I'll stay here in case John Doe wakes up or the docs have anything to add about his condition."

"You sure I can't skip Stark? Please?" Terri asked, sounding like she REALLY didn't want to have to deal with the arrogant billionaire. "I swear the guy's picturing me in fifty different kinds of swimwear every time we talk to each other."

"Detective Lee… don't tell me you're afraid of that pampered playboy?" she asked rhetorically and teasingly.

"I'm not afraid of him," Terri said defensively with a bit of humor. "I'm afraid of losing my job for breaking his jaw."

They both had a little chuckle at the imagery this produced in their heads because they knew that it'd take more than some womanizing rich guy to make them lose their cool like that. Both of them had worked hard to reach the rank of detective. While society might've progressed to the point where a female detective was no longer uncommon, there were still a few old timers who didn't think she and Terri could do a good job as detectives. Some learned the error of their ways and made with the respect while others were either stupid or stubborn when it came to their opinion of women. Like Terri, though, she never let it get to her because she had faith that if they collared enough bad guys, even the most moronic male would see the light sooner or later.

"Just count to ten and then find a punching bag to vent on," she said as she finished chuckling. "Works wonders for me."

"See you back at the precinct," Terri said before turning away, presumably heading for the elevator to get to the ground floor.

Turning back to the mystery man lying unmoving on the bed, hooked up to several vitals monitors, her mind wandered as possibilities floated about like leaves in a lake. Ever since mutants and super powered people came on the scene, the definition of reality as well as possible seemed stuck in a constant state of flux. Just when you thought you knew what could or could not be done, someone came along to break the rules forcing people to push the possible-impossible line somewhere else. For someone who'd chosen to put on a badge and protect the people of New York City it meant that being able to adapt on the spot to ridiculous changes in circumstances was an absolute must. She wouldn't claim something cocky like she could handle anything the world threw at her but she'd like to think that it'd take something pretty nasty to overcome her will to survive.

 _Here's hoping the same can be said for you…_ , she thought before deciding to swing by the coffee machine. _Whoever you are._


	2. Knowing is Half the Battle

Disclaimer: I do not own any of the copyrighted materials contained herein. They are the rightful property of their creators and/or associated companies. I make no profit from this whatsoever and I have no intention of changing this at any point in the future. I write because it's fun and because there are those who enjoy reading my work. Therefore I would appreciate it if no legal action were taken against me. I can assure you that what I have won't cover even a sixth of your legal fees.

 _ **Future Foundation Inc.**_

 _ **The Next Morning**_

 _ **Miss Sablinova's POV**_

"What do we have?" she said as she walked into the main workroom of the Future Foundation.

"Samples taken from Central Park confirm the presence of anti-matter, dark energy and several x-elements not to mention a few other things I can't make heads or tails of," Doctor Selvig replied as he continued to work on his computer.

"What about you, Simmons?" she asked, turning to the brunette working from her Chem station.

"Preliminary analysis of our samples shows no sign of any serious harm," Jemma replied, running through the printouts in her hand. "I'll need more time to be completely certain."

"Same here," Doctor Hanson said as she worked with Doctor Minerva to analyze their genetics. "There is SOME deviation but it's still well within expected parameters."

"Stay on top of it. Some deviation could become a lot of deviation and that would be bad," she ordered, privately pleased that her team was working so hard.

Hearing the door open, she turned to see the tech specialist of the Future Foundation, Leo Fitz, came in looking very excited with what he knew. She'd sent him to New York-Presbyterian Hospital to learn what he could about the man found at the center of the energy wave that had rolled over the entire city. Naturally she'd told the young scientist to use discretion but also to take advantage of any opportunities that might come his way. With the scientist's gift for all things technological, she fully expected him to have no trouble accessing the hospital's computer network. From there files could be copied and a covert surveillance programs could be placed in their security system.

"Tell me you have good news, Mister Fitz," she said as the tech specialist sat down at his station and immediately pulled his laptop out of his backpack.

"As much as I could get," Leo said as he typed away. "First of all genetic tests came back and conclusively proved he's not a mutant. No presence of an x-gene in his entire body."

Unexpected given the fact that people gaining powers via the x-gene was far more common than obtaining them through some sort of scientific experiment.

"However there were anomalies in the subject's vitals and biochemistry that hints that his body has been changed from the human norm," Leo said as she arrived behind him to look over his shoulder. "There was also a report of a massive discharge when they attempted to resuscitate him when he first flat lined."

"That could mean that his body now has an affinity for electricity," Simmons said, taking the information and coming up with a plausible theory.

"No. According to the report filed on the hospital network, they had to use the paddles two more times and neither of those times triggered the same sort of reaction," Leo Fitz said, shaking his head even as he continued to bring up the files he had 'acquired'. "I was able to get most of the test results conducted in the hospital but anything they sent away for is going to be harder to come by."

"Anything else?" she asked, already thinking of a few old contacts that might be able to get the missing data.

"Yes. I happened to be lurking around the subject's room when one of the detectives handling the case got back the results of fingerprint and DNA tests," Leo replied, turning away from his laptop. "Nada, zip, zilch. There're no matches to the fingerprints they pulled from him or the DNA sample. Either this guy had everything on him wiped from records everywhere or he was never in them to begin with."

"That's impossible. Anyone who's ever been arrested, voted or been to a hospital is in the system." Simmons said, clearly confident in her concept of reality.

"All that means is that he could be a recluse or a part of a society that prefers to live off the grid, like the Amish," Doctor Kafka pointed out as she came in with a cup of coffee.

"Then how did he get to Central Park?" Simmons asked, stepping away from her chem station.

"That is what we're attempting to ascertain," she replied, pointing out the abundantly obvious. "I'll reach out to some of my contacts that specialize in making people… vanish. See if anyone matching our mystery man has paid for the deluxe package."

"I have a few people I can contact as well," Doctor Minerva said as she put down the papers she'd been reading through. "They can't make people vanish but they might know how a person's DNA and fingerprints could be altered enough to make the system come up empty."

In an age where any criminal with the money could pay for new and interesting ways of escaping capture, she had kept up to date. While still experimental, there was work being done to see if installing a retrovirus into a person could rewrite their DNA from one pattern to another. Whether it was safe or even worked as desired was unknown. If the unknown person found in Central Park had actually undergone the process and it'd been successful, then the only way they'd wind up learning truth would be when he woke up.

As for when that'd be there was no way of knowing if what she was seeing in the records was anything to go by.

Unless…

Unless she could somehow persuade the city to turn over the John Doe to the Future Foundation if conventional medicine failed to wake him up. She had in her employ some of the brightest minds in their respective fields and to her knowledge her organization hadn't done a thing to make an enemy of the police commissioner or the Mayor of New York City. The fact that they were a small organization would also give both men the idea that they'd be easy to control or keep an eye on, even if that wasn't true. The only problem was coming up with an argument that'd both men away from any of the larger companies. Almost no one had heard of the Future Foundation and, while they might have heard of her, she doubted that it'd inspire much confidence. Ever since she'd lost it all to that bastard Whitehall, her former peers in the corporate world had regulated her to a B-list C.E.O. at best. Half of it was the usual chauvinistic crap while the rest was seeing her as second best compared to Whitehall and no one wanted to work with minor league businesswoman, even if she used to run with the big dogs.

 _I'll draw up a list of all the disadvantages of putting John Doe with someone like Stark or Richards,_ she thought as the gears in her mind began to spin. _Promote the benefits of secreting him away in a relatively unknown organization such as the Future Foundation. If I play my cards right and work quickly enough, no one else will know what's happened until it's too late._

It wouldn't be easy and the window of opportunity was rapidly closing.

She'd be a fool to think that Richards, Stark or half a dozen other powerful people weren't already drawing up plans of their own to acquire John Doe. Granted, no one had found out anything thus far that would make acquiring the mystery man lucrative but the manner in which he took the stage would be enough to warrant a measured expenditure of money and resources. If nothing came of it, she had little doubt that many of them would simply dump the young man in a cheap apartment with a few months' worth of rent just to get the good publicity. Some, though, would likely push things hard and even be willing to kill the unknown man in order to get something worthwhile out of the entire operation.

Another point to bring up when she argued in favor of relocating the John Doe.

She already knew of a few incidents that painted companies like Roxxon, Worthington Labs and Stark Enterprises in a rather shady light. It wouldn't take long for her to find even more mud to toss on them and, even if the other candidates had been cleared of guilt, it'd still have an effect.

Business was a game and she played to win.

No matter what it took.

 _ **New York-Presbyterian Hospital**_

 _ **Detective Greer Grant's POV**_

"So what's the prognosis, doctor?" she asked as she came to a stop next to the man the hospital had assigned to the John Doe.

It'd been almost a month since the man had originally arrived in New York City and the media circus surrounding the event that coincided with his arrival was still humming along. Commissioner Loeb had put officers at every entry point to the room where the young man was still sleeping in but that'd only forced the reporters down a different track. If they couldn't get a look at the object of their obsession then they'd ramp up what damage was done and let anger come up with ideas about what should be done to the only person suitable to be the scapegoat.

In terms of property damage there hadn't been much done, aside from some lights being blown out and some wiring in need of being replaced.

However in terms of people… there had been disappearances.

Not many but there were definitely people who had been missing since the night of the energy phenomena, with some leaving behind some very unusual clues about what'd happened. Other detectives were following up on the missing people but she hadn't heard of any substantial progress being made thus far. Still, she knew the men in charge of the search and they were good at what they did, so if anyone could track down the missing people it would be them.

"Well, the young man remains healthy but thus far our attempts to wake him up have proven less than successful," the doctor replied, looking through the window at the person in question.

"So he's in a coma?" she asked since that was the only condition she knew of that matched what she was looking at.

"Yes… and no, Detective Grant," the doctor replied, sounding like he was a little befuddled.

"What do you mean?" she asked, not liking it one bit when a professional sounded befuddled.

"John Doe's condition does mirror many of the symptoms of a coma but completely contradicts others," he replied, not sounding defeated, merely challenged. "We still haven't gone through all the conventional treatments so there's still hope that one of them could prove effective."

"I'm afraid that's not good enough, doctor," came a voice that she hadn't been expecting and definitely didn't like the sound of.

Turning her head she saw one Police Commissioner Oscar Loeb walking towards her and the doctor looking like someone had pushed ALL the wrong buttons with him a little while ago. Since the whole fiasco started she'd noticed that the thing that tended to do that were certain reporters who liked to get in the man's face about the lack of progress regarding the case. Like any person, once they recognized someone who'd cause them nothing but headaches, they did their best to avoid that person. Thus, when those certain reporters came around for a second helping, her boss did his best to avoid them. However the sharks of the local newspapers and TV stations were not the sort to let a game of keep away get in the way of getting their quote or tidbit of news. So from the looks of things they'd found a few new ways of cornering Loeb.

"What do you mean, boss?" she asked a little worried about what she was about to hear.

"What I mean, Detective Grant, is the Mayor is tired of waiting for our mystery man to wake up and explain himself. He's decided that the hospital isn't equipped well enough to help our John Doe regain consciousness," Loeb replied, showing his displeasure with the turn of events. "Therefore it's been decided to relocate him to a private facility where he can receive more advanced and specialized care."

"Oh God! PLEASE tell me you didn't agree to ship him off to Stark!" she said, just short of exclamation at the news.

"Do I look like I want to puff up that egomaniac any more than he already is with that team of freaks he's a part of?" he asked rhetorically before thrusting his hands into his pockets. "No, he's going to be handed over to a small operation of qualified professionals: The Future Foundation. All of their people are experts in their perspective fields and, best of all, barely anyone knows they exist."

"What about the press? The herd outside might've thinned but they're still ready to pounce the second they get any news about our John Doe," she said, knowing that, low profile facility or not, the press could still follow any vehicle they suspected might be carrying their prey.

That'd pretty much put an end to the Future Foundation's anonymity.

"That's why I've been authorized to requisition five of the hospital's ambulances for a few hours. We'll wheel out sheet-covered officers into each one and send them off in different directions. A lot of security and precautions to sell the deception," Loeb explained, sounding very confident in the plan. "While they're chasing the decoys, we'll be taking John Doe in an unmarked car. Dress him up in clothes from the lost and found, prop him up to make it look like he's just sleeping and then casually drive off. You're gonna be the driver, Greer."

A bit odd but not entirely unexpected, considering the fact that she'd been on the case since the beginning.

"How soon?" she asked, already thinking of routes she could take that'd make following difficult.

"Tonight. Visibility'll be low and we'll try to time it for when the pro-basketball lets out. Traffic'll be extra heavy, making any tailing difficult," he said, sounding like he'd been the one to think up the plan for the little sleight of hand. "We'll be in radio contact to help you steer clear of any traffic congestion so you don't get pinned down. Don't worry, we won't use any of the frequencies commonly used by the NYPD, so even if someone's monitoring their scanners they won't pick it up. We'll even try to make the directions sound like they're coming from a traffic helicopter to disguise things further."

"And when people figure out that they've been duped?" she asked, knowing that the press were going to be rabid at being humiliated like that.

"We'll say that there were indications that an outside party had been hired to abduct John Doe from the hospital and, fearing for the safety of the staff as well as the patients, he was relocated to safer location." He sounded like he could not have cared less how the press felt. "The only catch is that we'll need a cover story to explain why you or Lee go by the Foundation every so often. Maybe… maybe I can convince the mayor to send out a press release saying that the Future Foundation have been hired on as consultants to deal with the growing demand for cutting edge forensics. Lord knows with all the muties and freaks out there, the lab boys have been having a hard time keeping up."

"Could work. The press release would have to wait at least three weeks. Any sooner and the press might smell a connection to our John Doe," she pointed out, concerned about a potential weakness in the plan.

"Right. Maybe just slip it in between the bureaucratic bullshit they toss out every day," he said, sounding like he didn't read even half the memos City Hall put out on a weekly basis.

Not that she did either but most of the important stuff she stayed on top of since not doing so could get her pink slipped.

"I'll head home and slip into something a little less conspicuous," she said, already thinking of items hanging in her closet. "Something that doesn't scream 'cop'."

"The balloon goes up at nine tonight. Roll up to the east entrance of the hospital at eight-thirty," he said in a no nonsense tone of voice. "Keep it casual."

"Yes, sir," she said before turning away from her boss and the doctor to get to the hospital entrance closest to her.

It was going to be a BUSY night.

 _ **Future Foundation**_

 _ **Jemma Simmons' POV**_

"Get ready, people!" Miss Sablinova ordered as the time got closer to when their new patient would arrive. "We need to get him out of the car and into the building as quickly as possible to minimize exposure."

"I'll make sure his bed is prepped and the sensors are ready to go," she said, suspecting that her boss would want to begin work on John Doe ASAP.

"You do that, English," Miss Sablinova said as the rest of the team moved towards the building's side entrance.

Nodding, she watched them go until they left her line of sight before heading over the bed that'd they'd been customizing ever since Miss Sablinova received the call from the Mayor. The look of victory that'd been on her face during that call had been the happiest she'd seen the woman since the very beginning. However the smile only lasted until a minute or so after the call ended, before the white haired woman went all business. With all the speed of a hurricane orders had been issued and plans had been made so that nothing would go wrong either with the transfer or with the treatment. They'd only been given a few hours' notice but fortunately her employer had been operating under the assumption that her plan to gain custody of the John Doe would end in success. As a result, instead of being rushed to get everything ready in a few hours, all they'd needed to do in the last few hours was get everything primed for their patient's arrival.

Moving over to the array of systems meant to monitor vital signs, she turned all of them on then began to test each sensor to ensure they worked and then to make sure they each gave accurate readings. Once the vital sign sensors were confirmed to be ready and working properly, she moved onto the more exotic sensors they'd put together, designed to look for anything unusual. It was something that they'd done from the moment Miss Sablinova had announced her intent to make the Mayor put the unknown man under her care. All of them had debated what type of sensors and instruments should be used but they eventually chose to focus on ones that'd let them monitor the nervous system and brain. If they did so they might be able to figure out why the man wasn't waking up and cure him. Once he was awake they'd be able to get answers to all their questions and the questions of Commissioner Loeb, not to mention the Mayor.

Like clockwork once the last of the sensors were primed the others came through the door with John Doe only barely covered up with clothes that looked like they belonged in a lost and found box.

 _I may not be a fashionata like some of my colleagues but those are horrendous clothes,_ she thought as Leo began to remove the clothes, leaving only the hospital gown.

Hopefully the man would be of a similar opinion when he woke up.

She'd hate to think that he might actually LIKE wearing similar clothes.

"As soon as he's plugged in I want fresh samples taken. ALL OF THEM," Miss Sablinova ordered in a 'defy me and you DIE' tone of voice. "Mister Fitz, make sure all of the data from his vitals to what the sensors pick up are recorded and put onto our secure server. Every other day I want each of you to review the data and look for anything out of the ordinary or a clue that might explain why John Doe won't wake up. However let me make one thing perfectly clear…"

Jemma winced. This was going to be loud.

"NONE OF YOU ARE TO TAKE ANYTHING THAT'S IN THIS BUILDING OUT OF IT. NONE OF YOU ARE TO SPEAK OF WHAT IS GOING TO BE GOING ON HERE TO ANYONE, BE IT FAMILY OR A COMPLETE STRANGER!" Miss Sablinova yelled, showing everyone just how unwise it would be to disobey her. "This is our big chance to make the Future Foundation's mark on the scientific world and New York City. However if ANYTHING gets out, if anyone finds out that he's here, we could lose everything. Right now he is the HOTTEST commodity in the city and that means a lot of people want him and some of them will do anything to obtain him."

"Aren't you exaggerating a little, Sable?" Doctor Minerva asked, sounding a little defensive. "There's no guarantee that there's anything valuable about this man. He may have a connection to the energy phenomena and he might have an altered physiology, but that's the extent of what is known about him. For all we know his new physiology could just mean that he'll have slightly denser bone structure than an ordinary human or increased resistance to electricity."

"It is precisely due to that lack of knowing, Doctor Minerva, that will spur them onward. Curiosity is a powerful thing and many will equate the size of the energy phenomena with our mystery man's potential," Miss Sablinova said in a manner somewhat condescending. "Hell, they might presume that HE generated the phenomena! The point is that, until conclusive scientific and empirical proof is provided eliminating any sort of value from him, he is a target. If we want to get that proof then NO ONE can learn that he's here. Understand?"

"Understood, Miss Sablinova," Doctor Minerva said in a somewhat frosty tone of voice.

While she generally preferred a more positive working environment, she could make allowances considering the importance of this job. Up until now the Future Foundation had only gotten by due to its private backer Kevin Anderson and a few odd jobs that did not pay overly well. If they could unlock the answers of the John Doe and the energy phenomena, then it wouldn't instantly put them in good standing with the city and take them a big step towards being Stark Enterprises equal. As a result of that, the reputations of each member of the team would also take a giant leap forward, so that should they decide to leave in the future, getting a job somewhere else would not be an issue.

It didn't take long for them to get the subject connected to sensors and, just as the boss had ordered, Leo was making sure that every byte of data was being recorded for later examination. As for her, she took a selection of needles to obtain the biological samples she and Doctor Minerva would need in order to run their first battery of tests. For her she'd begin by comparing what she learned from her tests with what would be considered the human norm for someone his age and build. Once she had that data she would begin postulating potential causes of such differences as well as what affect they could be having on his body. She would then devise tests to either confirm or deny her theories before coming up with more tests. They'd have to work fast, though, since the Mayor and Commissioner Loeb would want results that would justify John Doe's relocation.

If they failed to get those results, their reputation would sink rather than soar and John Doe would likely be turned over to someone else.

Considering some of the alternatives her mind could conceive of right away, she doubted whoever the number two person turned out to be would have John Doe's best interests at heart.

With that in mind she focused entirely on her work so that not only could she guarantee accurate results, but also informative ones.

The clock was ticking.

"Amazing. It's been a week since he was brought here and three since he was found in Central Park. With that amount of time his muscles should've begun showing signs of atrophy, even with our efforts to counter it," Doctor Minerva stated even as she continued to process the latest tissue and blood samples. "Yet they haven't degraded nearly as much as I'd originally projected for someone of his body type. That would suggest some form of advanced regeneration."

"Theoretical limit on this ability?" Sablinova asked, sounding interested in the news.

"Too early to tell, especially since I believe it hasn't reached its full potential yet," Doctor Minerva replied, looking through her microscope. "However at the very least I'd imagine that broken bones wouldn't take nearly as long to fully heal as it would for you or me."

"I'm also seeing signs of a drastic increase in neural conductivity. Signals are travelling through his nervous system and brain much faster than an ordinary human," Doctor Simmons said from her computer workstation that currently displayed the relevant sensor readings. "This likely would substantially increase his reflexes, his ability to process information and possibly his ability to perceive the world around him."

"Would it give him super speed?" Sablinova asked, immediately jumping to a logical conclusion.

"Unknown. The readings I'm getting are of John Doe in a resting state of being," Doctor Simmons replied, typing away on the keyboard. "As you know, those readings will likely change drastically once he's awake and put through his paces. We'll have to wait and see."

"What about you, Doctor Selvig?" Sablinova asked, turning to the eldest among them.

"While I can leave the biology to you, the sensors I put together are detecting faint energy traces from Mister Doe," Selvig said before putting up the readings on the main monitor mounted on the wall. "I've run a comparison with every known form of energy we have on file and some I was able to get from some of my contacts in S.H.I.E.L.D. None of them was a hundred percent match."

"What about the partial matches?" Sablinova asked, sounding a little surprised at the news.

"There were only a few but they all pointed to other dimensional energy. The closest match was the S.H.I.E.L.D. file of when Thor asked Heimdall to use the Bifrost," Selvig replied before bringing up a hand to stop anyone from commenting. "While it is the closest match, that doesn't mean that he's from Asgard or even connected to Thor's people. It merely means that its energy that doesn't occur in nature and cannot be obtained through conventional means."

"Is it a match for the energy phenomena he was connected to?" Doctor Simmons asked, showing that she too could be logical.

"Maybe. I can't say for certain since we don't have readings of the phenomena as it happened, only the remnants our own instruments were able to pick up," Selvig replied, causing everyone to remember how they'd reacted to the energy washing over them.

"Do you think the energy's harmful?" Sablinova asked out of concern for everyone present.

"To us? Unlikely. Besides, it dissipates once it gets a foot or so away from his body," Selvig replied, not sounding worried about harmful exposure. "You would need to be in close physical proximity to him for it to have any effect on you at all and I'm not talking about just patting him on the cheek three times a day. It'd likely have to be… intimate contact."

"Well, no chance of that happening with any of us," Sablinova said without hesitation. "Though we may have to devise some theories about what COULD happen to someone after prolonged exposure to the energy. Assuming John Doe wakes up and assuming he enters into a romantic relationship with someone. it will definitely be Need To Know information."

"Minerva and I will see what we can do based on the available information," Simmons said, sounding less than confident about what they could postulate with so little to work with.

"Good," Sablinova said, allowing a small grin. "In this short time you've already managed to do more than the doctors at the hospital managed. Keep this up and I have no doubt that we will not only learn how to wake him from his coma-like state but also learn the cause of the energy phenomena that swept over the city that night."

 _ **Office of the Commissioner of New York City**_

 _ **Detective Grant's POV**_

"So what's the good word from the Future Foundation?" Commissioner Loeb asked as he looked between her and Terri.

"Well they've gotten a definite handle on what's been done to our John Doe and, according to Miss Sablinova, that's half the battle," she replied, professionally summarizing the science talk she'd been on the receiving end of less than an hour ago. "She said they're just handling the final loose threads and then they'll be ready to give waking him up a try."

"Good. Good. It's refreshing to see the city actually getting what they paid for," Loeb said with a pleased smile. "To be honest I was worried it'd be months before we got so much as a peep of good news from them. Did they give you any sort of idea when their first attempt would be?"

"Three weeks to a month from now," Terri replied despite the foul look that blossomed on Loeb's face. "Sablinova made it clear that with the changes that'd been done to Doe's body they needed to make sure they hadn't overlooked anything potentially catastrophic. It'd be a bad way to end things if they wound up killing him by accident."

This seemed to mollify the police commissioner somewhat but he'd still likely be in a bad mood for the rest of the day.

"Stay on top of it," Loeb ordered in a no nonsense sort of way. "The second they give you a specific date for when they plan on trying to wake John Doe up, I want you to make it clear that at least one of you will be there to witness it."

"You plan on having us question him the second he comes to?" Terri asked, sounding a little confused. "I doubt he'll be clear headed enough to speak, never mind tell us what we want to know."

"But at least he'll be able to give us his name and maybe where he's from," Loeb said, unwilling to back down. "That'll be enough to run through the system both locally as well as with my F.B.I. contacts. Even if his DNA and fingerprints don't ping in the system, a name might."

She had to concede that point.

Even if whatever name John Doe gave them turned out to be a load of crap, it's possible that it might be an alias the unknown man might've used in the past. If that was the case then it was simply a case of backtracking through system using this first step. Whether they were criminals or just people who used the services of people capable of fabricating identities for those who wished to hide, the odds were good that some mention of them could be found in a law enforcement database. At the very least it was another avenue to follow in their efforts to unravel the mystery of what happened in Central Park.

And they needed to find something soon.

In addition to the normal pressure of finding out the details of what'd happened that night, there were growing signs that the energy wave might not have been as harmless as they'd first thought. Since handing John Doe over to the Future Foundation, the number of missing persons had continued to increase and none of the missing people showed signs of wanting to run away from home or running afoul of shady people. Now while the detectives handling the disappearances were exploring every avenue one of them found, it suspicious that a lot of the disappearances occurred either the night of or in the days following the phenomena. Her friend hadn't come across anything unusual about the cases other than the timing but he'd promised her that he'd keep her informed of any new developments.

Too bad the media would also be keeping her up to speed, if only after they put what they knew to print and broadcast.

While it hadn't become the main story, there had been a few articles indicating that reporters were in the process of tracing the effects of the energy wave. It was only a matter of time before they learned of the missing people and information, like that would be like chum luring in a Great White Shark. They'd follow every lead and, if they smelled a major story, they wouldn't rest until they learned everything they possibly could. Now in that case the NYPD wouldn't have too much to worry about because her friend, along with other Detectives, had been on the case since day one. Their records were impressive and she had every confidence they'd get to the bottom of things.

The only thing that could possibly sour things would be if something popped up that'd make them think that the disappearances were connected to the phenomena. If that happened, they'd start pitching theories left and right, with some of the real mudslingers trying to put the blame for the disappearances on John Doe. In the absence of the truth they'd weave whatever story they thought would sell the most papers or get them the best ratings. They didn't care about who they hurt or the lives they ruined so long as it benefitted them in the end.

She HATED those kind of reporters and wasn't shy about letting them know it.

Also, if it turned out that John Doe was innocent of any wrongdoing regarding the phenomena, she didn't want him to have to deal with all the shit that those yellow journalists would sling his way.

The only way she knew of to counter something like that would be to get to the truth quickly and get it out through trusted reporters. While she always had a certain amount of suspicion when dealing with the media, there were a few decent reporters that cared about the truth as much as she did. They also had the morality to know when to let the public know something and when to keep what they'd learned hidden. If they could get the truth out first, far enough ahead of anyone else, then anything that followed would have a lesser impact than if the yellow journalists broke the story first.

Hopefully.

"Here's hoping that everything goes smoothly, sir," she said, implying her willingness to be there when the people at Future Foundation tried to wake the mystery man up.

"Amen to that, Detective Grant," Loeb said, sounding like he considered the whole case a headache.

Not surprising considering how the man disliked everything superhuman or high tech.

"Now get outta here," Loeb said as he picked up a folder in front of him. "The Mayor's planning a press conference in two hours to update the city on the aftermath of what happened in Central Park and I gotta put together a statement."

"Knock'em dead, boss," Terri said as the both of them got out of the chairs in front of the Commissioner's desk.

"Considering who's in the audience, Lee, I'd call that wishful thinking at the very least," Loeb said with one of his rare grins before his all business mask returned.

Leaving the man's office, she and her partner made their way through the building to the front entrance, intent on getting their to do lists done for the day so they could head home. For her that meant filing an official update to the case, checking with her friend handling the missing person's case to see if there was anything she could do and then head home for a good night's sleep. Keeping the location of John Doe a secret, taking complicated routes to the Future Foundation building and dealing with the usual Big Apple craziness was not easy on the nerves.

"Detective Grant! Detective Lee!" came a voice that made both her and her partner freeze.

Turning, she had to wince a bit at the sight of someone she knew very well and even called friend but who also tended to be a world class headache. Betty Brant, star reporter for the Daily Bugle, had been an associate of hers for a few years now and, while they hadn't gotten to the 'best friends' stage yet, it wasn't out of the question. The biggest obstacle was the woman's constant reiteration of 'the people have a right to know' and her habit of getting hip deep in trouble when she went after a story. True, she'd managed to survive said trouble while getting the scoop more often than not but it was often very messy. More than once the woman had come close to getting her butt thrown in jail for her efforts to find the truth and only evaded that fate through the deep pockets and loud voice of her boss, J. Jonah Jameson.

"What's up, Brant?" she asked, hoping that it was something she could talk about.

"Well, as you know, Jameson's had me working the Central Park case. More specifically the man that was found at the center of it all," Betty replied, sounding like she was excited. "Unfortunately he got moved about a month after being admitted to New York-Presbyterian Hospital. No one knows where. So as you can imagine it made getting my story a little difficult."

"Can't write a story about someone you can't find and doesn't have a past," she said, not saying more for fear of letting something slip.

"Exactly! So I started looking around for places he might've been sent and tried to figure out who might've taken him there," Brant said before getting an 'I know something' look on her face. "If he'd been taken by a company or a foreign country Loeb would be having you guys turn the city upside down. He hasn't. That means the NYPD does know where the man is."

"We can neither confirm or deny that the New York Police Department has any knowledge of the mystery man's current location." Terri said, keeping her voice even and devoid of tells.

"Please! Loeb's a control freak and would never let something this big escape his reach," Brant said, brushing aside the canned denial. "If something happens in his city he'll want to be kept in the loop no matter what. That said, he's also not stupid. He knows that everyone and their brother will start looking for John Doe the second they realize he's no longer at the hospital. So instead of maintaining a constant police presence around his new address, he plays it smart. He keeps it to two people and has them keep tabs on things."

 _This woman is scary smart,_ she thought as she tried to come up with plausible lies to divert Betty from the truth. _It's gonna get her in trouble one day that she won't be able to get out of._

"So I tried to think of who he'd assign to such a duty," Betty said before looking her right in the eye. "Guess who's at the top of my list of suspects?"

 _SHIT! Just about every newspaper and news station knows me and Terri were the assigned detectives to the case in the beginning!_ she thought as she realized how much harder keeping tabs on the Future Foundation was going to be.

"Captain Stacy and his protégé Charlotte Jones, of course!" Betty exclaimed as though she figured she'd hit the jackpot.

Surprise exploded on her face and she had no doubt that Terri was feeling the same thing because she was sure the reporter was about to say THEIR names and press them for information. To find that the brunette had two different people in mind was a shock but in this case it was a welcome one. Betty would no doubt misinterpret their responses and so long as they didn't make her suspicious this was the best possible outcome.

"What makes you think that Stacy and Jones are babysitting the John Doe?" she asked, hoping this encouraged Brant into believing in her scenario.

"I asked around and both of them have a rep for disappearing from time to time and being completely cryptic when asked where they'd gone," Brant replied, sounding absolutely certain. "Loeb probably doesn't like it but it proves they can give people like me the slip if needed, allowing them to go wherever John Doe is secretly."

 _Lady Luck must be feeling sorry for us,_ she thought, inwardly feeling relieved that a proverbial bullet had been dodged successfully.

"I suppose it's possible but they both work out of different precincts, Betty," she said, sounding like this was just a theoretical debate. "Why're you talking to us about it?"

"Because you're two of the best cops I know, of course," Betty said with an obvious intent to flatter. "You've work with both of them, too, so I figure you two might be able to tell me what some of their tricks are and how to stay on their tail next time they decide to check up on the guy. How about it?"

"Now, Betty, you know there're things we can't spill to the press and how we lose tails is one of them," she said trying to both sound reasonable as well as humorous. "If details of our tricks get out, imagine how many scumbags would get away from us. It'd be bad news for everyone."

"What? You think I'd blab?" Betty asked, sounding offended by the insinuation being made. "If I told everybody about the tricks then I'd been throwing away a one of a kind edge. C'Mon! You can trust me."

Now while she was tempted to say nothing, she recalled how it sometimes paid off to stay on good terms with the press.

"All I can tell you is that there's a garage on the quickest route from here to the Empire State Building that doesn't mind letting us slip inside when we want to lose a tail," she said, trying to make it look like she was worried about being overheard. "Owner's a retired cop. If you lose Stacy or Jones around there, that's the reason. Good enough?"

"I guess so," Brant replied, sounding like she wasn't satisfied but the light in her eyes implied the opposite. "Just don't forget about me next time a big story breaks. You scratch my back and I'll scratch yours. Understand?"

"Yeah, yeah," Terri said, sounding like she'd heard it all before.

"See you around, G&L!" Brant said as she strode off, no doubt intending to make immediate use of her newfound knowledge.

She waited until the newswoman was out of sight before speaking. "How much do you think she'll hate us once she realizes only the green beat cops use that hiding place?" she asked with a bit of a grin on her face.

"Enough that we'll probably have to wait three or four months before we can ask her if she's heard anything about anything," Terri replied with an identical grin on her face.

"I can live with that," she said as the two of them resumed their walk to her car.

 _ **Future Foundation**_

 _ **Miss Sablinova's POV**_

"Are you sure this is safe?" Detective Grant asked as the two of them watched the rest of the Future Foundation crew prepare to wake up John Doe up.

"My team has utilized every resource available to examine John Doe. We've learned as much about his physiology and biology as we can while he's like this," she replied without hesitation. "If we're to make any more progress then we need to wake him up. Based on what we've learned about him, the risk of permanent or fatal harm is minimal."

"Minimal?" Grant asked, sounding like she didn't like the fact that there was any risk involved.

"We're dealing with the unknown, Detective," she replied with a bit of annoyance. "There's always a bit of risk when dealing with the unknown. The best we can do is minimize it."

"Then let's hope for all our sakes that none of your people miscalculated anywhere," Grant said, making it clear that she'd keep to herself until the process was done.

Good.

She'd personally reviewed every test result recorded and had each of her employees explained to her what role they'd played in devising the current revival process. While her expertise in the various fields were not as in depth and pervasive as her employees, she knew enough to understand what she was being told before putting it all together inside her own mind. Everything she'd read and been told made it clear that the theory was behind the revival process was sound and, until they put it into practice, they'd be unable to progress any further.

"Miss Sablinova? We're ready to begin," Doctor Simmons said from her position next to the controls that would allow the biochemist to administer drugs that would facilitate revival.

"Then proceed, Doctor Simmons," she ordered, glad that it was finally time to begin. "And remember: we have an audience."

Subtle message? Make damn sure you don't screw things up.

"Explain to me again how this is supposed to work." Detective Lee said from her position next to her partner.

"If you insist," she said with a sigh of exasperation. "We begin by lowering John Doe's body temperature in keeping with standard coma treatment involving induced hypothermia. Once it reaches the desired temperature we then begin administering drugs designed to incrementally disrupt his neural pathways in the hopes of breaking the stalemate keeping him in a coma. If after reaching the maximum safe dosages of each drug John Doe is still in a coma, we'll move onto the third part of the process involving calibrated electrical discharges to key nervous system convergences within the body. Again this is meant to break the stalemate going on within him by attempting to trigger a neural restart, much like how you'd restart your computer after it's frozen up."

"I'm assuming that you'll keep the voltage in the safe range?" Detective Lee asked with a bit of concern.

"Up until it becomes necessary to push the envelope a bit," she replied as she watched the digital display indicate that the internal temperature of John Doe had reached the target area. "Your superior, Commissioner Loeb, had made it clear that he wants results. I'm sure he won't mind if we skate a little close to the edge."

She could tell that the two detectives didn't like the fact that she was willing to risk John Doe's life in order to wake him up but the fact that the extent of their opposition was glaring meant they were not offended enough to take physical action. If it got to the point where they would try to physically stop the process… she had a little something in her pocket that would stop them in their tracks.

"Administering tertiary drug regiment," Doctor Simmons asked before turning the dials required.

The various colored drugs slunk up and down through the tubes before disappearing into John Doe's body. Looking to Fitz and Doctor Minvera, she waited to see if they spotted any appreciable changes to Doe's body. After a minute Leo turned to her and shook his head in the negative, indicating no significant changes. A bit disappointing but not entirely unexpected considering how the doctors at the hospital had faired when they attempted to wake John Doe up. Nodding to Simmons to administer the secondary drug regiment, she waited to see if they would garner a more satisfactory response. Looking to the man in question, she thought for a moment that she could see muscles tensing and relaxing in a significant manner. While this was an improvement, it didn't last long before the muscles settled back down to where they'd been before the drugs.

Without being told Simmons turned the dials needed to release the primary regiment of drugs and this time the results were decidedly more dramatic. To the outside observer it looked like John Doe was going into convulsions, with random muscles activating causing the body to thrash this way and that. Fortunately they'd already taken the precaution of putting leather straps at all the major joints and across the chest in order to keep Doe from hurting anyone. Out of the corner of her eyes she could see the detectives' level of concern spike up a notch or two but, to their credit, they didn't do anything stupid like try to force Simmons to stop.

"Any change?" she asked Fitz, hoping that they wouldn't have to progress to the next stage of treatment.

"There was a momentary anomaly in his brainwaves but it only lasted ten seconds," Fitz replied after looking at his computer screen.

Damn.

They couldn't up the dosages for the drugs any higher or they would definitely do physical harm to John Doe that would take a while for him to recover from. While it was not entirely impossible that regular administering of the primary regiment drugs could bring the man back to the world in increments, she was not willing to wait that long. Every failure that was laid at the feet of the Future Foundation was one more thing keeping her from reclaiming her father's legacy.

"Doctor Minerva? Prepare to begin administering the electric discharges," she ordered, her arms crossed under her chest to show her resolve.

"Shouldn't you give him a breather before going that far?" Detective Lee asked, sounding like she might press the issue if necessary.

"No. The Primary drugs got a reaction from him," she replied without looking in the detective's direction. "We have to build on that before he sinks back to where he was, if not further into a coma."

"Ready to begin administering shocks. We'll follow the standard increments used in electro-shock therapy," Doctor Minerva declared before the familiar whine of an electric charge building could be heard.

The second the sound cut out she watched as John Doe's body lurch upwards, putting the strength of the restraints on him to the test. When the charge was spent the man's body went slack on the bed. Looking to Fitz to see if there was any change in brainwave patterns, a negative shake of the head caused frustration to rise within her. A part of her had hoped that the combination of the drugs and the electricity would give way to a breakthrough but it hadn't.

Yet.

Nodding to Minerva to increase the voltage to the next level, she once more heard the whine cut through the air but this time it reached a pitch greater than before. Then all at once it vanished, followed by John Doe to lurch up so violently and strongly that it actually managed to snap some of the restraints intended to hold him down. This lasted longer as she'd expected it would but, once the man settled once more, she turned to Fitz hoping that the results were more substantial.

"There was a definite increase in activity in frontal lobe and it's not disappearing like the change in his brainwaves," Fitz declared, sounding excited by the turn of events.

"Excellent. Increase the voltage by thirty percent and hit him again," she said with a pleased grin appearing on her face.

Clearly electricity was the key to getting results and, whether it was the fact that it was reacting to the drugs still lingering in the man's system or was by itself the cause, it didn't matter. All that mattered was that they'd taken the first step to achieving their objective.

"Isn't that… risky?" Doctor Minerva asked, showing hesitancy for the first time.

"Nothing ventured, nothing gained," she replied before narrowing her eyes at the woman. "Do it."

"Now let's wait just a minute," Detective Grant said, sounding like Minerva's hesitancy had only inflamed her own concerns. "If there's a problem, shouldn't we slow it down a little? You've gotten a reaction and I think Commissioner Loeb will be happy with that."

"Well, I am not," she snapped, glaring at the detective for a moment before turning back to Minerva. "Plus thirty percent. NOW."

For a moment she thought that she would have to go over to the controls herself in order to initiate the plus thirty percent electrical discharge but before she could do anything Minerva obeyed. The whine went up in pitch almost to the degree where a person would be motivated to cover their ears rather than endure it and then… SILENCE.

At this point she fully expected a… disconcerting lurch… from John Doe.

What she got was something decidedly different.

With violence comparable to Hollywood special effects, the electricity that was supposed to have remained in or close to John Doe's body surged outwards, striking the machinery for the most part. However a few stray bolts succeeded in striking Doctor Hansen and Doctor Minerva, sending both to the ground in a heap. For a moment she feared that she would have to order an evacuation until the fireworks died down but then they appeared to listen to her will and fizzled into nothingness.

"Well, that was… impressive," Simmons said in a tone that implied the statement was unintentional.

"Too impressive," Doctor Selvig said as he moved to grab the first aid box from beneath a nearby cabinet. "Check on Maya. I'll see how Minerva's doing."

"Right," Simmons said before moving to do as asked.

"Well, I hope you're happy, Miss Sablinova," Detective Lee said with a bit of snark in her tone. "You've fried your equipment and possibly injured two of your employees."

"They were both made aware of the potential risks involved in working for the Future Foundation, Detective," she said in a frosty tone of voice she learned from a peer she'd met at a dinner party. "As for the equipment it can be replaced, rebuilt or repaired easily enough."

She could tell that this didn't sit well for either of the detectives but, truth be told, until she discovered that it bothered Commissioner Loeb she would press on. Only Loeb could remove John Doe from her care and she was confident that she could manipulate his weaknesses of personality in order to make him see things her way.

"Uuuhhhh…" came a groan from the bed that sounded like it came from a throat that hadn't spoken in a long while.

Immediately everything and everyone else in the room ceased to exist as she crossed the room to arrive at the bedside of the one who would put the Future Foundation on the map.

Looking down at him, she could tell that he was still very drained of energy and it was likely that both the drugs as well as the after-effects of the electro-shock therapy played a role along with anything else. Still, presuming he didn't slip back into his coma-like state, they would be able to deal with all of it in relatively short order. The drugs could be flushed from his system, the effects of the electro-shock would wear off on their own and some food would handle the rest once the man was strong enough to eat it. For now, though, she needed to ascertain the state of his cognitive faculties in order to know what to expect from him in the future.

"Take it easy, young man," she said in what she hoped was a polite and friendly tone of voice. "My name is Silver Sablinova. You're at my company The Future Foundation."

"Wha…happen'd?" he asked, managing to focus on her face with only minor lapses here and there.

That put him in much better standing than most men she'd encountered.

"That's what we would like to know," she said, hoping his continued consciousness would linger a few minutes more. "You were found in Central Park at the focal point of a massive energy wave that swept over the entire city. Can you tell me your name?"

It was an important piece of information and it would hopefully get the detectives off her back for a few days, allowing her and her employees to learn more.

"…Xander…Harris…" the man replied before his eyelids drooped shut and he lost consciousness.

Glad to get a name but fearing the worst, she turned to Fitz.

"Fitz, get the portable EKG and brainwave monitor!" she ordered, determined to determine to find out if their leap forward in progress had fallen on its ass.

To the young man's credit it didn't take long for him to do as he was ordered and within five minutes he had the device up and running. From there it was just a hop, skip and a jump for Xander Harris to be hooked up and readings to start coming in. For a moment she held her breath but, when a smile appeared on Leo's face, she found her own face doing the same.

"It's alright," Fitz said sounding relieved. "He's just sleeping. Both EKG and brainwave monitor confirm that."

"Good… good. Get the replacement equipment from storage," she ordered, feeling like a great weight had been lifted off her shoulders. "We might have managed to wake him up but he still has a long road of recovery ahead of him. So let's make sure he reaches the finish line."

Nods all around confirmed that, despite the dangerous light show of electricity, all of her employees were still professional enough to know where they should focus their energies. Turning to the police detectives, she could tell that Mister Harris' awakening had dimmed their hostility towards her somewhat but not entirely.

"Well, detectives, I believe your commissioner will be quite pleased with your next report," she said with the confidence of victory. "Mister Harris is awake and, since he hasn't been in a coma-like state for very long, his physical rehabilitation and care shouldn't talk long at all. In fact I imagine it should only take a little under a week of rest before he'd be ready to answer all your questions."

In truth it was probably more accurate to say that Xander Harris would be able to answer questions in half that amount of time but she wanted to get first crack at him. Depending on what he told her, she'd do her best to make sure he faced no legal ramifications for anything the energy phenomena might've done to the city. She might not have the full wealth and resources of her father's company but enough had been squirreled away in her private account that she could afford it. If not then she could contact her backer, Ackerman, to contribute since it only made sense to protect a potentially useful asset.

"Then we'll be in touch," Detective Grant said, looking like she was just going to let any anger she was feeling go.

Her partner Detective Lee, on the other hand, looked like she'd be paying extra close attention to the Future Foundation for the foreseeable future.

A minor concern and a potential boon if the wrong sort of people came sniffing about.

 _Enjoy your remaining time with my company, Whitehall,_ she thought with an internal growl. _I have a feeling your days are numbered._

 _ **S.H.I.E.L.D. HQ**_

 _ **Director Nick Fury's POV**_

"Director Fury? Agent Mirror is on line one for you," Agent Morrison said through the inter-vision in his office.

"Put her through," he ordered, knowing that Agent Mirror would only have broken communications silence if there'd been a significant development.

A few seconds later Agent Morrison's face was replaced with the familiar head of Agent Mirror, who was contacting him via one of the many concealed communications consoles hidden throughout New York City. Naturally they were as secure as they could be made, with everything from fingerprint scanners to voiceprint analyzers, but it still required that agents look around for eavesdroppers before using them. He couldn't by looking at the background tell which console was being used but it didn't really matter.

"Status report, Agent Mirror," he ordered, hoping that she had good news for him.

"Subject Sleeping Handsome has woken up but is still experiencing the side effects of long term unconsciousness as well as the rather harsh methods used to wake him up."

"Any immediate abnormalities?" he asked since it'd been one of the possibilities proposed by S.H.I.E.L.D. experts.

"Nothing new thus far aside from a violent reaction to voltage just shy of doing permanent harm to a standard human."

"A defensive mechanism?" he asked, looking for confirmation of a possibility.

"Possibly but we'll have to wait until he's recovered more before we can say for sure."

"Expected recovery time?" he asked, wanting to know how quickly the potential threat would be back on his feet.

"Sablinova gave the NYPD a week but it'll actually be three to four days."

"Any reason for her to lie?" he asked, eyes narrowing in suspicion.

"One of Sablinova's primary objectives has always been to reclaim her father's company from Daniel Whitehall. It's possible she wants to get what she can from Sleeping Handsome before the GCPD takes him away from her."

It was a valid possibility.

Already there were several people lawyering up with the intent of filing lawsuits against Sleeping Handsome and, while most of them would be thrown out of court as gold digging operations, a few of them did have an actual leg to stand on from a legal perspective. Whether it would stay that way would depend on what Sleeping Handsome had to say for himself about the method in which he appeared. If he was connected to the energy wave's generation or how it made its way to Central Park, then he would likely be held legally accountable for any harmful side effects. If he turned out to be just another innocent victim then he still might be in trouble but nothing some covertly hired lawyers couldn't minimize. Nothing that'd show he had anything to do with it but enough that there was a good chance of Sleeping Handsome avoiding a prison sentence.

Still, this line of thought brought up another topic.

"And your other two assignments?" he asked, moving the discussion along.

"I've managed to make some progress on those fronts but I'll need more time to track the cash flow to their points of origin. The methods being used to hide the trail are top dollar."

With that information he began to cross off a few names from his list of potential suspects. Anyone with the money or the means to hide their connections to that degree came from a specific region of society. He'd reallocate S.H.I.E.L.D. resources to focus on the new list he now had in his mind and hopefully that would dig something up.

"Continue with your surveillance of Sleeping Handsome and your investigations into your two other targets," he ordered, remembering that these secure calls only stayed secure for a specific amount of time. "Any new information discovered on my end will be copied and deposited at the usual drop point. Let me know if anything new develops."

"Understood. Agent Mirror out."

With that the inter-vision went blank, leaving him in his office to contemplate the future and the shapes it would take based on what he'd just learned. Ever since the incident in Central Park he'd been monitoring the developments and he knew it had the potential to become much greater than it currently was. Unknown energies interacting with humans rarely ended benignly and neither did unknown individuals that showed up along with said unknown energies. However, until they learned more about both the energy that comprised the wave as well as Sleeping Handsome, he couldn't feasibly make the argument to have the man transferred to his custody. If something happened to get the label 'threat to national security' or 'threat to innocent lives' slapped on the dark haired twenty-something man, THEN he could build on that and exert some authority.

Until then he could only wait and hope that Agent Mirror managed to get something he could use to seize the unknown man or force some of the more militant factions to stand down. Quite a few wanted to grab the unexpected arrival immediately and maintain a position of strength from the very beginning while giving away virtually nothing.

People like General 'Thunderbolt' Ross, who either saw Sleeping Handsome as either a monster like the Hulk or a potential weapon to use against the Hulk.

With such a one track mind it was a wonder that Thaddeus could get anything done at all.

Fortunately enough people in the military hierarchy agreed with him and had blocked the man's attempt to gain custody of the arrival.

 _Not that that'll keep Ross from trying to get it without official sanction,_ he thought as he began to dial up the other person he needed to talk to. _Better put a team on monitoring all of Ross' assets for any sign that they might be up to something._

It took only a moment for the connection to be made to the other end of the call but he almost immediately wanted to end the call once he saw the man on the other end.

"What can I do for you today, Fury?" Stark asked in his usual arrogant tone of voice.

The man might be a hero and one of the most intelligent men on the face of the planet but his arrogance made him hard to tolerate and that was on a good day.

"I was hoping you'd learned something more about the energy wave," he replied, hoping the man wouldn't indulge in his penchant for stirring the proverbial punch. "S.H.I.E.L.D. scientists have been working with what they have but Stark Tower and the Avengers Mansion were closer to the point of origin. I'm betting you had tech set up for this sort of situation well in advance. Feel like sharing?"

"Well, I could say something like 'this is confidential Stark Enterprises information' and I'm not under any obligation to tell you anything, buuuuttt… I'll like the fact that you owe me one better," Stark said in his usual insufferable tone. "Preliminary analysis of the energy wave confirmed the presence of anti-matter, dark energy and x-elements that until now had been firmly in the realm of theoretical science. I'm a bit pissed at that since it means I won't be able to discover them on my own and copyright any of them."

Typical Tony Stark.

"My people know this already, Stark," he stated to move things along. "What else you got?"

"What I got is that while you and everyone else are so focused on the energy wave, I found something more interesting at ground zero," Stark replied a smug grin firmly on his face. "Extra-dimensional ether. As long as scientists have believed in alternate dimensions, they've been trying to figure out the architecture of it all. One of their theories was that there was an in between space, a buffer zone if you will, between one dimension and the next. Our unexpected guest is from out of town. WAY out of town."

THAT was a bit of knowledge that his S.H.I.E.L.D. scientists hadn't provided him with and it did put a different perspective on things. If Sleeping Handsome was from another reality, his appearance implied that it contained humanoids identical in appearance to regular homo-sapiens but then the question of whether or not the differences in his biology were natural or unnatural. If the changes were the result of exposure to the energy that comprised the wave that swept over New York City… he could be looking at a rash of new super humans. He'd ask a handful of people from his intelligence division to sift through all news or police reports posted after the Central Park incident for signs of untrained super power usage. If they were anything like mutants, they'd have next to no control over their abilities and self-teaching themselves would take time.

Time enough to leave a trail for him to follow.

"Danger to the people of New York City?" he asked, wanting to know how bad things could be.

"Not long term. I went to the park as quick as I could and even then my sensors barely detected anything," Stark replied with a shake of his head. "If I'd gotten there just a couple of hours later I probably wouldn't have picked up anything at all."

Good. That meant no ongoing genetic alterations. Only the people that happened to come into contact with the energy on the night in question would be affected.

"Will everyone in the city be changing?" he asked since he didn't know whether or not being indoors or outdoors would offer any protection.

"Hard to say. I'd need to examine a few that have been changed to see if there's any common factor they all possess," Stark replied, for once not having an answer, "but if past experience is any indication then only those with right genetics and who received a high enough dosage of energy would be changed. Everyone else would just feel funny for a little while then go back to normal."

"I'll see if I can get you a genetic analysis report on our mysterious visitor," he said, figuring that if Stark learned this much it'd be interesting to see what else he could figure out.

"Thanks," Stark said before a beeping noise caught his attention. "Sorry, Fury. Gotta go. I've got a meeting to attend and if I don't show up Pepper's going to read me the riot act."

With that the connection was severed leaving him by himself.

 _I do not envy that woman,_ he thought with a shake of his head. _Keeping Stark under control definitely means she's earned her paycheck and then some._

 _ **Xander's POV**_

 _Uuuuhhhhh… I feel like I've been used as some troll's punching bag,_ he thought as consciousness returned to him. _Wha…what happened?_

It was as he reached back into his memory that recollections surfaced that had him immediately sitting up straight like someone had shoved a cattle prod up his ass.

The cult.

Being ambushed beneath the fortress.

Desperately trying to stop the end of the world.

More important than all that: Dawn's seemingly inevitable demise.

Before he could even think of asking the standard questions, though, a wave of disorientation besieged his body, causing his awareness of what was going on to drop to half. Then, just after he started to fall backwards, a pair of hands grabbed him and steadied him.

"Easy, Mister Harris," s woman with an English accent said before he was eased back onto whatever bed he was lying on. "You've been through a great deal. It's going to take a little longer before you're strong enough to stand up."

"Don't call me Mister Harris. The name's Xander," he said even as he noticed how scratchy his voice was. "People start asking for Mister Harris I start looking around for my deadbeat father."

"Xander it is then," the woman said as his vision got back to normal. "You'll be happy to know that your body is mending quickly and you're expected to make a full recovery."

He was of mixed feelings when it came to that announcement because, while he might not have any suicidal tendencies, the whole 'sole survivor' status came with the expected emotional baggage. Already his mind was filling up with the 'what ifs' and 'could I have done better' questions, making him wish that he'd remained unconscious. Still, he hadn't survived over twenty years fighting against demonkind without being able to compartmentalize trauma and emotional baggage.

"Where am I?" he asked, figuring that learning that bit of information would be good to know.

"You're at the Future Foundation in New York City," the brunette woman replied with your typical nurse smile. "You were brought here after your arrival in Central Park."

New York City? Central Park?

The release of all that energy at the fortress must've somehow teleported him to the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, though why it dropped him in New York City he didn't know. Still, it was better than being dead and, as soon as he got in touch with the Council, they'd relocate him to the NYC branch for any further medical care. Flexing his muscles and testing how his body felt, it didn't look as though any serious damage had been done, at least not compared to some nights after hunting. However it was when he reached up with his right hand to feel for any head injuries that a certain fact came to light.

He had depth perception again!

It'd been years since Caleb had gouged out his eye and, while Willow had proposed several plans for replacing or growing a new one, he'd rejected them. He saw his missing eye as a badge of honor and a reminder of those they'd lost in the final battle of Sunnydale. Through training and preparation he'd learned to compensate, making it so that he could handle himself in a fight just fine. That didn't mean that he was foolish enough to turn down help if it was needed but rather he was good enough that Willow and Buffy's attempts to sideline him didn't succeed.

Now he had the lost eye back and this was proven when he closed one eye, then the other, never once losing his view of the doctor who'd spoken to him.

It was really back.

"Is something the matter?" the brunette woman asked with some concern.

"No… not a thing… unless of course you count the fact that I haven't had two eyes for two decades now," he replied, his old wit slipping out due to the shock of being whole once more.

"You were missing an eye?!" the brunette asked no doubt rhetorically and in shock. "Well… um… I suppose getting it back would be… ah… a rather unexpected surprise."

"Yeah! You can say that again, Doctor…?" he asked, hoping that she'd provide her name.

"My name is Doctor Jemma Simmons and if you feel up to it, I was hoping to ask you a few questions." Simmons asked, sounding like she'd abide by whatever he decided.

"You can ask your questions but I can't promise I'll answer all of them," he replied, being honest in that he'd be keeping some facts to himself.

"Very well," Doctor Simmons said, sounding like she'd take what she could get. "Where are you from?"

"Well, I was born in Sunnydale, California, but I've been all over the world and spent most of the last ten years in Africa," he replied, keeping close to the truth without giving any details. "As for how I got from Egypt to New York City, I have no idea."

That was true enough.

Everything he knew and suspected about the fortress and the room beneath it said that he should've been killed either by the energies released by the artifacts or by the doomsday device. He certainly shouldn't have been teleported across the ocean by either. Still, he was alive and had somehow regained his missing eye, so he wasn't complaining too much.

"Well, there was a sizeable energy wave that washed over the city that coincided with your arrival," Simmons said, implying this was a significant concern. "From what we've been able to discover through examining the samples we took, they are not of this reality and were only theorized about until now. Are you certain you can think of nothing that might have caused this?"

"I'm afraid not," he replied even as he wondered just how on top of things the Council was at the moment.

If the after effects of the doomsday device's failed activation had been as flashy as Simmons was indicating, then coming up with a credible cover story was going to take some doing. It wasn't like some flashes of light in an alley or figures in a mist, both of which could be excused away using common everyday things. This was something witnessed by the entire population of New York City and recorded on who knew how many instruments. True, it could be passed off as some sort of fluke scientific anomaly but the fact that people had apparently connected him to it left only two options: vanish and stay off the grid for a few years or stay put while playing the dummy. When they finally realized there was nothing more to learn from him, it'd be safe to return to the Council and business as usual.

"Well, I suppose that was too much to hope for," Simmons said, sounding somewhat disappointed at the lack of new information. "Still, perhaps there is something you can help us with. There are some unusual anomalies in your biology. Did you have them when you were in Egypt?"

"What do you mean 'anomalies'?" he asked, not liking the implications.

"Well, your biochemistry is significantly different from an ordinary human being. There are also signs that your body's ability to heal is superior to baseline humans and then there's the increase in your nervous system's conductivity speed," the replied, sounding like there was a more detailed and scientific description.

This caused him to frown in concern because, while he had been exposed to quite a few things since he'd first met Buffy, none of them had proven grand enough to raise the eyebrows of any doctors. Sure, if he was worked over by geniuses using cutting edge tech they might detect the lingering changes from his brief tenure with the swim team in high school or the other paranormal incidents he'd been involved with. If there had been significant changes done to him as a result of all the crap he'd been through since his second year at Sunnydale High School, the Council would've taken steps to ensure that only doctors that were in the know would get anywhere near him.

"It's news to me," he said, keeping to the truth but also keeping things short. "When I was back in Egypt, my body was about as ordinary as you could get. The only thing that'd get me into any medical journal was my ability to eat ten boxes of Twinkies and not get sick to my stomach."

"Then it is likely that the changes were caused by whatever phenomena transported you to Central Park," the said, jotting down something on a notepad. "Rather odd considering that they seem so professionally done."

"What do you mean?" he asked, worried about the implications.

"Well like breeds like, Xander. Changes done in a chaotic manner tend to produce chaotic results," the replied, falling into a partial lecturing tone. "Changes done in a precise manner produce precise results. Based on our examination of your body while you were comatose, there were no signs of unnecessary or superfluous biological alterations. All of the alterations from basic human norms were done with great precision that is almost impossible outside of a lab."

 _I do NOT like the sound of that._

The doctor's reasoning was sound and he certainly didn't think the chaos of the doomsday device's explosion along with the artifacts could come even close to being called precise. This strongly implied that, between his last memory of Egypt and his arrival in New York City, someone or something of great skill had messed with his body. His past experiences told him it was unlikely that the changes had been done by human science and that could only mean sorcery. The fact that he had no recollection of being some warlock's lab rat implied that the perpetrator didn't want him gabbing about the wrong things. The question he had to answer though was: was there something more to this than could be seen by the naked eye?

Was his release a sign of the end or was this just the first step in a much larger plan?

The only way to find out would be to get in touch with the Council so he could be transferred to Willow's lab in Council HQ. Once there his best bud could do the voodoo that she did so well and find out just how screwed he was.

 _Better get the ball rolling,_ he thought before focusing on Simmons. "Do you think I might be able to make a phone call? I'd like to let my friends know where I am and how long it'll be before I can head home."

"Certainly," Simmons said without a moment's hesitation.

 _Not exactly the response I was expecting,_ he thought as the woman gave him an old cell phone. _If they were planning on holding me prisoner, I expected there to be a few more hoops to jump through, or at least a warning that the call would be monitored. Either they're not doing me the courtesy of telling me they're listening in or they expected someone else to be here when I woke up._

Opening the flip phone, he began to dial the number for one of the Council's legitimate side businesses so he could pass along the desired message while not giving away an important location. Unlike Travers and his kind, they didn't get the entirety of their funding from the wealthy, the governments or the illegal sale of dangerous mystical artifacts. They established legitimate businesses all over the world ranging from the more lucrative ones to those where the skills of a Watcher or Slayer would thrive. By doing so they made certain that no nation or wealthy band of rich guys could hold anything over them and force them to do anything they didn't want to do. It also provided those Slayers and Watchers who didn't want to get involved in the fight against demonkind a way to contribute without getting their hands dirty.

 _I wonder if Judy'll be the one answering the phones today,_ he thought as he heard the connection ringing. _If she is then I can have a little chat and give my message at the same time._

It took five rings but eventually someone picked up on the other side.

"Randy's Roadster Restoration, you find'em we fix'em," came a man's voice that sounded half energetic and half apathetic.

' _Randy's Roadster Restoration'? This was supposed to be a flower shop number,_ he thought with a quirk of his eyebrow. "Sorry. Wrong number."

Hanging up he pondered his next course of action.

While it didn't happen often there were times when they had to shut down one of their businesses when there was evidence that the local demon population had clued into the fact that it was a Council business. As usual when the demons couldn't succeed at taking down Slayers or field combat-ready Watchers, they'd target those less able to defend themselves. True, he hadn't heard of the New York City florist shop being at risk but then he didn't know really just how long he'd been unconscious. With a shrug he decided to try one of the businesses that'd been secretly modified to act as a fallback position in case the city's main branch building was ever compromised. It was a bit of a gamble but even if someone traced the call and investigated, the S.E.P. wards and memory obscuration spells would make spreading the news impossible for the uninformed.

Dialing the number he waited for the familiar sound of the phone ringing on the other end of the line.

"We're sorry. That number you have dialed does not exist. Please check your number and try again."

"What the-?" he asked at just above whisper level.

One of the front businesses he could understand going under while he was unconscious but the fallback building for the NYC branch of the Council? Impossible. Any threat big enough to take it down would've definitely made the newspapers, even with the Council allies in the city working to cover up the truth. Even then the phone company message should've been 'this number is no longer in service' instead of 'this number does not exist'.

Something was VERY wrong and he needed to find out as soon as possible.

"Is something the matter?" Simmons asked with a bit of concern in her tone.

"Guess whatever happened to me did more damage than I thought," he replied, trying to come off as less concerned than he really was. "I could swear on a box of Twinkies that both those numbers belonged to my friends but one connected me to a roadster business and the other apparently doesn't exist. Guess my memory's a little messed up."

"Hmmmm… there were no neurological signs of memory loss or damage," Simmons said, jotting down a note, no doubt to run a few more tests.

Great.

Even after being in so many hospitals and having so many doctors or nurses work on him for various reasons, he still didn't like needles.

Pushing himself into a sitting position, he directed his focus inward to see just how much strength he had and whether or not it'd be enough to make a break for it. The covert tensing of the muscles and movements disguised as stretching told him that, while he wouldn't be nodding off for a few hours yet, he didn't quite have the strength to be walking about. It'd be another day or so of sleep before his body would be ready for sneaking out of the building he was in and that was assuming that no one tried to physically force him to stay. If it turned out that fighting was needed, another day or two of sleep would need to be added on.

 _I'll give it four days,_ he thought with mild resignation. _Willow's probably been looking for me from the day I vanished from Egypt. Don't know why she hasn't found me yet but hopefully now that I'm awake it'll be easier. If no one springs me before then I'll make a break for it._

It'd raise questions and no doubt trigger pursuit from those who wanted answers from him but he couldn't just sit and wait to leave at some unknown point in the future. Numbers that didn't connect to where they were supposed to and one that, according to the system, didn't exist did not fill him with the warm fuzzies. If his oldest friends and chosen family were in some sort of trouble then his place was at their side, not lounging in some bed answering questions with lies or half-truths.

Besides… with Dawn most likely dead, he had a responsibility to stand before Buffy and tell her face-to-face what'd happened to her sister.

To do any less would dishonor Dawnie's memory.


	3. Your life cannot be continued as dialled

Disclaimer: I do not own any of the copyrighted material contained herein. They are the rightful property of their respective creators and/or associated companies. I make no profit from this whatsoever and I have no intention of changing this at any point in the future. I write because it's fun and because some people enjoy reading my stories. Therefore it would be greatly appreciated if no legal action were taken against me.

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 _ **Future Foundation**_

 _ **Greer Grant's POV**_

"He's hiding something," she said as they watched Simmons play the role of the smiling nurse on the monitor.

"You really ARE a detective!" Sablinova exclaimed mockingly before taking on a more serious tone. "Anyone with even an ounce of experience can see that he's being less than honest. The question is what is he hiding?"

"He looked genuinely surprised by where the phone numbers he dialed connected to," she said, scratching her jaw in thought. "If he's lying about his head being messed up then running a history check on the addresses they're connected to might tell us more."

"Indeed. You check with your resources in the NYPD and I'll check with my own sources," Sablinova said, sounding like some of those sources probably weren't very legal.

Still, until she heard something that'd hold up in court as an illegal act, she'd keep her mouth shut.

"I'll also see if I can find out more about Sunnydale. He didn't seem to be lying when he told Simmons about it," Terri said, putting forth her own contribution to the discussion. "Even if his prints and DNA don't come up in the database, if someone in that town knows him we can start filling in some blanks."

"Then it looks like we have a plan," Doctor Hansen said from her position next to Sablinova. "We'll keep you informed of any new developments detectives."

She knew a dismissal when she heard one so, with a gesture to Terri, the two of them began to move for the exit so that they could get work. It'd take some serious work to dig up what they could about the phone numbers and Sunnydale but you didn't get to be a detective in the NYPD unless you could put in the necessary hours.

"So you want to go for the coffee run or should I?" she asked Terri once they were outside.

"I did it last time," Terri replied, shaking her head in the negative.

"Fine. A double double same as last time?" she asked just in case her partner wanted something different.

"Better make it a triple. I have a feeling we're in for a long night," Terri replied, getting into their squad car.

"See you there," she said with a nod before turning in the direction of the best coffee and donut shop in New York City.

Strolling down the street, she began to think about what she'd learned about Xander Harris now that he was awake and able to answer questions. One of the qualities that made a good detective was the ability to read a person's body language in order to figure out what they were thinking and whether or not they were telling the truth. No cop could be called a master at it but the good ones managed to figure out the truth with enough consistency for their superiors to bet money on. From what she could see of Harris, he didn't look to be the sort of man that she regularly put cuffs on and shoved into the back of a squad car. While she was positive he was holding something back, it wasn't because he was protecting himself but rather someone or something else. However she could also tell that the fact his phone calls didn't go through to the right places concerned him more than he let on. She didn't think it'd be bad enough to warrant keeping an eye on him twenty-four seven right away but, if things dragged on too long, it might come to that.

Worry and concern grew as time went on. Once it reached a certain level in a person, they could do some pretty crazy things.

 _I just hope that we manage to find out what Xander wants to know before he decides to do something nuts,_ she thought as she turned a corner to see the front of 'Abraço'.

She breathed a mental sigh of relief when she saw that it wasn't busy since she had no particular desire to wait an hour or more to get coffee and donuts. Don't get her wrong, the coffee and donuts they sold at 'Abraco' were the best in New York City as far as she was concerned, but the place was small with a limited serving capacity. That meant that, depending on when you arrived, you could get what you wanted inside of ten minutes or wind up having to wait more than an hour. Most people didn't stick around more than twenty minutes but there were a few caffeine addicts who were willing to lose an hour of their lives in order to get their fix.

The sound of glass shattering caused her to quicken her pace, worrying that there might be trouble on the inside but put drawing her weapon on hold until she knew more. Walking through the entrance, she looked around and soon found out that the source of the crash was a shattered glass coffee pot on the floor, with coffee splashed at the point of impact. Seeing as how none of the other customers seem to be giving it any real regard, she took that to mean that nothing dangerous was happening. It was only when a waitress she recognized all too well bent down to begin cleaning up the mess that she clued into what had probably happened.

"Hey, Max! Taking some of your own special brew a little too much?" she asked as the redhead looked up at the sound of her voice.

"Ha, Ha! Very funny, Greer," Max, aka Maxine Loeb, said with a roll of her eyes even as she continued to work. "So I assume you want the usual for you and Terri?"

"You got it," she replied before bending down to help the daughter of her boss. "So, seriously, what happened?"

"Nothing. Just got a little distracted and it slipped out of my hand," Max said with an odd brusqueness that was out of place. "Give me ten minutes and your order'll be ready to go."

 _There's definitely something going on with that girl,_ she thought as she watched the redhead walk away. _But what?_

She'd known the girl for years, ever since the girl was in high school as a matter of fact, and with her occasional visits to pick up her father or drop something off for him at work they'd gotten to know each other. What amused her the most was how different the Commissioner was when his daughter was around. Normally he was cranky, bitter and had a will of iron when it came to taking the fight to the scum of the city, not to mention a hard case when things got serious. But the second he laid eyes on his daughter he was all smiles and would probably fit right in with dads you'd see on television sitcoms. Naturally anytime someone tried to use this to make a joke or have a funny moment he'd growl at them in a way that reminded them just who he was and what he could do to them.

Didn't stop the chit-chat around the water cooler from occasionally breaking down into muffled chuckling, though.

While Terri didn't always like it, whenever a situation developed when Max might be in trouble, Loeb always sent the two of them to find her and make sure she got somewhere safe. Back during her high school days that wasn't too big of a problem but once university came along… hoo-boy, the girl made a point of making the two of them work for their paycheck. Half she suspected was just your typical teenage rebellion while the other was probably due to the grief she'd probably been getting for being the police commissioner's daughter. It made for some eventful times, up to including telling a young man who kept forgetting where her eyes were that if he EVER even THOUGHT about making Max another notch on his bed post, he'd be singing soprano before the end of the week.

The fact that she 'accidentally' forgot to put the safety on her gun and 'accidently' fired off a round that buried itself in the dirt near his feet was just the crowning touch.

Max didn't speak with her for a month after her 'boyfriend' started avoiding her like the plague the very next day.

Watching the girl work to fill her order, she remembered how proud Loeb had been when his darling little girl graduated from university and how resistant the commissioner had been to her moving out to a place of her own. Sure, he'd wanted to be supportive but like some parents they just didn't want their child to leave the nest. A loud argument and an awkward admission later and Max had an affordable apartment and a father who was willing to let her stand on her own two feet.

"Here you go, Greer," Max said, returning with two cups of coffee and a paper bag with four pastries in it. "That'll be eight forty-five."

"Thanks," she said before stuffing a ten dollar bill in Max's apron pocket. "Keep the change for your tip."

"Thanks. So what's the scoop on that Xander guy?" Max asked, handing over the coffee and the pastries. "Is he hot?"

"Where's you hear about him?" she asked in return, a bit of concerned.

Ever since Xander Harris had been relocated to the Future Foundation, Loeb had gone to serious means to keep all information connected to the young man contained. Every bit of relevant information was kept triple encrypted on computers, ones with the best security programs, and every hard copy was securely placed in the best vault available to the NYPD. Anyone who'd read either the digital versions or the hard copies had signed legal documents that basically said that they'd face serious jail time if they told anyone what they knew.

"Um… let's just say that Daddy needs to remember to log out when he's finished with the computer at home," Max replied, looking a little uneasy.

Probably didn't want Commissioner Daddy finding out that his daughter snooped around his computer when he wasn't around.

"And you need to remember that it's illegal to look at police documents, especially if they belong to the commissioner," she said as a stern warning before grinning a bit. "But as far as guys go… he's pretty easy on the eyes. If I were only five years younger… rowr!"

They both had a good laugh at her words even if she was being half honest with her opinions, but once that was done they said their goodbyes and she left for the precinct where her partner was likely already at work.

 _Better get there and do my share,_ she thought as she walked in the sunlight. _That's what it means to be a partner, after all._

 _ **Future Foundation**_

 _ **Xander's POV**_

 _Right as rain,_ he thought as he stood under his own power. _Time to say goodbye to this place and find out what's happening with the Council._

Not that the people here were bad or anything (okay, maybe Silver and Maya could use an attitude adjustment), but he was going nuts not being able to find out what was going on with the Council. He couldn't risk making another batch of phone calls since that'd only make his current hosts suspicious of him and get them to start looking into his history. Willow might've done a good job scrubbing their old records and keeping their daily records from being tarnished with their actions, but if a person looked deep enough and knew how to read between the lines, there'd be trouble. Most of the world's governments, their top leaders at least, knew about the Council and its mission. The reason it was kept to those in the upper echelon was to limit the number of people the darkness could influence or corrupt. Keeping those susceptible from realizing the carrot existed was better than trying to keep them from what they knew was there.

 _Too bad I can't get a new set of clothes,_ he thought, looking down to the pale blue scrubs he was wearing. _Guess I will have to 'borrow' some once I'm out and away from here._

The first step was to reduce the number of eyes on him so he could slip away easier.

"Well, now that I've proven I can stand and walk on my own, can someone point me to the nearest bathroom?" he asked, keeping things friendly and casual. "Not that I didn't love doing it into a bed pan an' all but it's kind of hard to get the job done with… spectators."

"Certainly, Mister Harris," Silver replied, sounding about as cold and polite as she usually was. "Mister Fitz? Would you please lead him to the men's bathroom?"

"Sure," Fitz replied, sounding like he didn't like being reduced to a low ranking minion.

In fact it kinda reminded him of how Buffy used to treat him when she was in one of her high and mighty moods.

So he waited until they were out in the hallway before he made his move.

"Say… you don't happen to have Silver's cell phone number, do you?" he asked, like it was perfectly normal to ask that.

"I do but I wouldn't bother trying to ask her out," Fitz replied offhand, as though he'd seen it happen before. "Everyone who's tried has gotten shot down so far. If it wasn't for the fact that I've seen her turn down women, too, I'd think she preferred them."

"Maybe she just hasn't met the right person yet," he said in a playful tone. "What do you say we write a few invitations on the stalls in the men's washroom. 'Interested in a good time, call five-five-five whatever her number is'."

"Are you INSANE?! Only members of the team have the number!" Fitz exclaimed, clearly against the idea. "You put that in the washroom and she'll think I did it!"

"You're worrying too much!" he said, trying to put the man at ease. "Sure, she's told the team, but I'm sure she's give her number to other people. Just keep a straight face, one or two words if you don't trust yourself to speak, and she'll move onto the next possible suspect."

"It would be nice," Fitz said with a grin, showing he had a bit of a trickster in him before a frown took over, "but I can't lie to save my life. No matter how hard I try they always know when I'm lying. Plus, no way could I keep a smile off my face if she got a few calls while I was around."

Point.

It was a concrete rule of tricksters everywhere that you needed to be able to keep up a straight face when the target started pointing fingers. If Fitz didn't think he could do it then it probably would be for the best that they not try this particular prank.

When the bathroom came into sight, he saw that instead of a room with multiple stalls it was just one of those single toilet and single door types.

Perfect.

"Well here it-" Fitz said but he didn't get any further.

With speed and years of practice he put the technician in a chokehold that was both quick to render a person unconscious while it prevented any cries for help from getting out. It only took a few seconds but when the body went limp he knew the guy was off to la-la land and would likely be there for a handful of minutes before regaining consciousness. Releasing the chokehold he carefully carried Fitz over to the bathroom, using one arm to open the door before taking his unconscious acquaintance inside to be positioned on the toilet seat.

"Sorry, Fitz, but I got places to be and I have a feeling time is not on my side," he said in a low tone of voice.

Once he was sure Leo wouldn't slide off and hit is head on the floor or the sink he stepped out of the room and closed the door. By his reckoning he'd have at most ten minutes before Fitz regained consciousness and roughly the same amount of time before the others in the lab began to wonder what was holding up the two of them. He had that amount of time to find an exit, go through it and then get some distance. Picking a direction that was opposite the area he knew had people in it, he carefully proceeded, not wanting to stupidly run past any security cameras or let the sound of his lead feet give him away. While demons and warlocks didn't usually bother with the high tech security, there were a few that were smart enough to adapt to the times. That being the case he'd had practice enough at evading security cameras that the ones he came across only slowed him down for the amount of time it took for one of them to pan away.

It didn't take long before a glass door showing the outside world appeared and, with a goal visible, he picked up the pace.

Then stopped when he saw two forms appear on the other side of said glass that he recognized both as people and as obstacles.

Detectives Terri Lee and Greer Grant.

Not willing to go back the way he came and risk running into the rest of the lab crew, he chose instead to blitz the cops before they spotted him. Breaking into a full out run, the plan was to nail them just as they took their first steps inside and then do everything he could to get lost in the crowd before the women recovered.

Too bad the Harris luck had to kick in at that point.

Out of nowhere the world blurred, if only a little, and the doors that had seemed so far away were suddenly well within arm's reach. He tried to stop but for some reason the friction between the floor and his feet wasn't proving to be enough, thus forcing him to bring both arms in front of his face in preparation for impact.

Pain danced up his arms as they broke through the glass of the door and then impacted on the sidewalk seconds later. Rolling with the fall, he soon got back to his feet and then the world went back to normal rather than the little blurred state it was moments earlier.

 _What the FUCK!?_

"Harris!? What the hell?!" Detective Lee yelped sounding just as surprised to see him as he was at what just happened.

 _Worry about the why later!_ He surged forward on his still-strong strides. _Gotta get outta here before these cops stop me!_

This time when the world blurred a bit he was more prepared for what happened next but it was still unreal enough that he had a few close calls. It took almost a full minute of running before his mind settled enough for him to begin figuring out what the hell was going on. At first he thought that some warlock or hell demon had cast some weird sort of mojo that was messing with his perceptions of the world around him. Something along the lines of when you looked into your rearview mirror and remembered that what you saw there was actually closer than it appeared to be. However that theory got debunked when he looked at the people he was passing on the sidewalk only to find them as motionless as statues.

In fact everything that shoulda been in motion was stuck in place, even if that place turned out to be mid-air.

 _No mojo user or demon has the power to do this on this scale,_ he thought as he came to a stop in front of a used clothing store. _If they did the Earth would already be Demonville. But if it's not the world that's being whammied, then that leaves just… me._

As soon as he came to a complete stop the world around him instantly began to move at the expected rate.

 _So it only happens when I'm running,_ he thought with a frown. _That sounds and looks awfully familiar._

He didn't get much further with his thoughts when the sensation of high temperature and the smell of smoke told him he should be more aware of his environment. Stretching out with his senses, it was a few moments before realizing that the heat and the smoke was coming from him, or more precisely the back of his shirt. Not being a big fan of burning flesh, especially if it was his, he pulled the shirt off as quickly as he could before tossing it to the ground. Looking at it as it smoldered, it certainly didn't look like it'd caught on fire. If anything it looked more like tiny embers had eaten away at it faster than any moth, leaving charged edges mixed with tiny orange embers appearing and then disappearing at random. It was beyond weird but, even as he started to think things through, parts of his mind nagging him to remember something important, he came to realize that he was standing barefoot on a sidewalk in New York City without a shirt. Already people were staring at him and only a handful of the expressions could be considered good things.

 _Better get a change of clothes,_ he thought as he entered the used clothes store. _Here's hoping that the owner of the store is okay with bartering._

Especially since all he had to work with was the cell phone he'd picked from Fitz's pocket while propping him up in the bathroom.

Once inside he could tell that he pretty much had clothes from every decade since the fifties but, like he'd expected, none of what he could see were hot items. Sure, some of them were probably considered pretty cool when they'd first graced racks but, according to modern fashion, they were hopelessly antiquated. Still, he couldn't afford to be too picky considering the fact that he'd likely garner more attention walking about as he was than in out of style. Looking over to the cash register, he found an elderly man who'd clearly never left the sixties and still dressed like a hippie even though some of what he was wearing had likely been bought in slimmer days.

"Hey, man! Looks like you're in serious need of some new threads," the cashier said, adding period consistent lingo to his choice of clothes. "You came to the right place. Won't find a better deal on choice threads for ten blocks."

"Good to know. Do you accept… barter?" he asked, hoping against hope that the answer was yes.

"Sure, man! Not everyone's got cash on them and you look like you're in need," the cashier said with a smile. "What do you got?"

"An old phone of mine that I don't need anymore," he replied, keeping the words short and to the point. "Good enough for a full outfit?"

"Old? This came out just two years ago, man," the cashier said as he looked with appreciation at the cell phone. "Still, it is pretty cool. Definitely worth the price of a new outfit. Look around and see if anything pops out at you."

"You don't need to see proof of ownership or anything?" he asked even as he wondered at the statement about the phone being two years old.

In his mind the phone was easily fifteen years old and he'd been amazed that Fitz had had such an old model on him.

"Nah! People are too suspicious of each other these days, man," the cashier replied with a dismissive wave of his hand. "It's gotten so bad that people've accepted it as normal. It isn't."

"I'll admit that some people can be paranoid these days but a little natural suspicion's only healthy," he said as he perused the shelves for something acceptable. "People who blindly trust other people can be taken advantage of by people who don't care who they hurt so long as they get what they want. Having a little suspicion to your personality can protect you from that."

"Hey, man! I'm not saying not to be suspicious at all," the cashier said with hands up in the 'do not shoot' position. "Just 'all things in moderation', ya know?"

Nodding in agreement, he continued to look through the stacks of clothing before coming upon a geeky plaid suit that looked like it'd come straight out of a late sixties comic book. It chafed against his personal fashion sense but it was also something he'd never normally wear, so it'd make it more likely that anyone looking for him would discount it as a possibility. If he added a fedora to the mix to cover his head then the disguise would be almost perfect. Unless someone got close enough to look him in the eye, he'd just be another person in the crowd. It was a few more stops before he was finished but then he was in front of the cash register ready to be rung up.

A few dings later and the clothes were officially his and he even managed to get a hundred bucks of change back.

 _Guess the phone's something of a collector's item or something,_ he thought before saying. "You got a changing room I can use?"

"Over there, man," the cashier replied, pointing to a curtained off box.

With casual strides he crossed the room to the changing room and entered it so he could get changed.

Too bad he only got as far as putting his bag of clothes down on the chair inside before his eyes fell upon the mirror and what it showed.

It showed him wearing the bottoms of scrubs but with no shoes but that wasn't what had him so shocked. It was the fact that the body was the one he had when he was in his mid-twenties, not early forties like it should've been. Sure, he'd known that his body had been through some changes, getting his missing eye back was proof enough of that, but he'd never once thought that he'd been put back into his prime.

 _Hell, this is better than my prime,_ he thought, turning sideways to look at his profile. _I might've been pretty fit at twenty-five but not this chiseled._

Taking only a second more to take it in, he began to take off the old clothes in order to put on the new ones.

All the while he had a bad feeling that there was a check heading his way in the near future for all the changes he'd undergone.

If there was one thing that'd been pounded into his brain over the years it was that nothing of this sort ever came without a price tag attached.

The only question was when the clock would hit zero and who'd come to collect.

 _ **Future Foundation**_

 _ **Silver Sablinova's POV**_

"Well… this is a colossal screw up," Fitz groaned, a little depressed at how he'd been played and then knocked unconscious.

"Not entirely, Mister Fitz," she said as she continued to review both the internal security camera footage as well as the recordings of what happened out on the street. "We now know one very important truth about Mister Harris. He's capable of moving at superhuman speeds, almost too quick to be caught on conventional cameras."

"She's right, Fitz," Simmons said in an effort to console her colleague. "Up until now we had no clue he could move this fast. There was nothing you could have done to stop him."

"Doesn't change the fact that he's gone who knows where." Fitz said, seemingly determined to wallow in his mistake.

That would not do one bit.

"If you feel so bad about being caught unawares then do something productive with that feeling," she said with a bit of an edge. "Hacking into the city's CCTV network to find our missing patient would be a good start."

"No need for hacking, Miss Sablinova," came a voice from the door. "I can log you in."

Turning she saw that Detectives Grant and Lee had arrived. She'd seen them on the exterior cameras but had hoped that they would be already in pursuit of the escapee, allowing her Foundation a window of opportunity to find him first.

"Very well, Detective," she said before gesturing at the lab's main computer workstation. "If you would?"

A few keystrokes later and the big screen split into fourteen different video feeds from the same number of cameras spread out across the city.

"Let's start first by accessing the cameras from around the Future Foundation starting from when we knew Mister Harris was there," she said, not even looking at Fitz.

A few clicks later the images being displayed changed to reflect the new parameters and the time stamps in the lower right hand corner confirmed they were looking at the right time. A little adjustment of her gaze and she succeeded in finding Xander at the point where he exited the building, nearly bowling over the detectives in the process. A moment later the man disappeared in a burst of speed that made it look like he'd vanished into thin air, or at least it would have if it weren't for one thing.

It seemed that a byproduct of moving at superhuman speed was the production of golden arcs of energy that bore a strong resemblance to electricity. The energy never remained in the air for very long but it did make it easier to follow him from one camera's range of view to the other. Mentally as she did so, she took into account the distance Harris was creating between himself and the Future Foundation. Once he came to a stop she'd be able to calculate just how fast he was running and from that extrapolate a top speed.

 _Once I know that I can determine how useful he might be with my plans,_ she thought as once again her thoughts turned to her once and future company.

Someone who could maneuver at super speed could evade detection on security cameras, with the right concealing outfit, of course, and get into files that were presently beyond her reach.

"There!" Simmons exclaimed, pointing to a specific video feed.

Everyone focused on the specific video feed and watched as Harris popped into being, having obviously slowed to normal human speeds. Grabbing a nearby notepad she immediately made a note of where he'd appeared and the time stamp on the CCTV camera feed.

"He's on fire!" Doctor Hansen exclaimed, pointing at the rising smoke from Harris' back.

From the angle the camera was capturing everything from they couldn't see precisely the source of the smoke but they all believed in its connection to fire. A few seconds later Xander noticed the threat and immediately tore off the shirt, casting it to the ground and allowing all to see the source of the smoke.

"Odd. Then again if his protection is truly skin tight then it'd make sense," Fitz said, sounding like he was working through a theory.

"What do you mean, Fitz?" she asked, not liking it when he kept things to himself.

"I believe the damage to his shirt was caused by the wind friction brought about by running at super human speeds. I'd assumed after watching him start to run that his super speed would be like the mutant Quicksilver in that a protective aura extended far enough to protect his clothing," Leo replied as he used the computer to bring up a picture of the mutant in question. "However the damage to the shirt refutes this possibility, pointing instead to the likelihood of it being skin tight."

"So anytime he moves at super speed he'll wind up burning his clothes off?" Detective Lee asked, sounding like she dreaded confirmation of this. "He's gonna get arrested for indecent exposure if he doesn't watch himself."

"Not necessarily. I imagine he needs to reach a specific rate of speed to cause enough friction for combustion. So long as he stays below that he should be fine," Leo said offhand even as he restored the assortment of video feeds but making sure they focused on the area around Xander.

"Still… if we're going to explore the upper limits of his abilities, we will need something for him to wear that will be able to stand up to such friction," she said out loud even as her mind went to work on some possibilities.

"We could always contact Reed Richards," Detective Greer suggested after a moment's pause. "He made the outfit for the Human Torch so it should be easy for him to come up with something for Xander."

"NO! That will not be necessary," she said somewhat forcefully. "The Future Foundation is perfectly capable of fabricating something appropriate for him to wear. Besides, I'm sure Mister Richards and his team are far too busy with their own work for such a trifle."

She would not allow ANY of the other players in New York City to intrude on what would be her victory and her victory alone.

"Isn't that right, Fitz?" she asked, turning to the tech specialist on the team.

"Well… there is that prototype suit we've been developing for the fire department," Fitz said with only minor hesitation. "It'd take some modifications and some trial runs but it is possible."

"Get to it," she ordered with the utmost authority. "Use whatever resources you need. Just get it done."

"I'll get to as soon as we're done here," Fitz said with a nod of confirmation.

"No, you'll get to it now," she said as she moved to take his place at the main computer workstation. "I'll handle things from here."

With a bit of uneasiness Fitz got out of the chair and immediately left the room to begin modifying the suit for Harris to use. Turning her attention back to the screen, she watched as Harris entered one of the stores, she couldn't make out the sign from the camera feed, but just the same she did her best to make sure every camera surrounding it was displayed on the screen. Harris would NOT being slipping out the back door and getting away.

Minutes ticked by and for a moment she wondered if the young man had found another way out that wasn't covered by the city's camera network. Her worries came to naught as a few moments later someone exited the building that matched Xander's height and build but wore a different outfit than he'd gone in with.

"Smart move. He'd stand out like a sore thumb in just his pants," Detective Grant said with approval. "Change into civilian clothes and he can just blend into the crowd."

"You think he's going to blend in with THAT outfit?" Detective Lee asked rhetorically.

"Fashion-wise? No. But the color combo isn't all that different from what other people are wearing," Grant said, making her opinion known. "So long as he doesn't stand by himself anyplace he'd be easy to miss."

"And if we do lose him?" Lee asked, not liking that possibility.

"Then our only option would be to try and anticipate where he'd go and get there before him," Grant replied before taking out her cell phone. "Something I should probably get started on. If he's smart enough to change clothes to blend in, he might be smart enough to hide from the cameras."

"How do you plan on figuring out where he'll be?" she asked out of genuine curiosity.

"By checking on the results of the search we're doing on the phone numbers he dialed," Grant replied as she started dialing a number. "Enough time should've passed for something to have come up by now."

"But that second number he dialed came up as nonexistent," Simmons pointed out, reminding everyone that her phone had been tapped for security reasons.

Something she'd been wholeheartedly in favor of since, in her mind, knowledge was power and she intended to be VERY powerful.

"Maybe but with a bit of luck the people at the phone company might be able to give us some possibilities of which addresses might've been assigned that number in the past," Grant replied as she put her phone to her ear. "Shouldn't be more than a dozen or so and we can keep tabs on all of them through the CCTV network."

"A good plan," she said with respect. "In the meantime we'll explore other possibilities through here. With luck we'll find him before anyone else does."

With Xander Harris now out in the open and the likelihood of his powers being displayed for all to see, it was only a matter of time before the wrong people took notice.

People like Daniel Whitehall.

If they found out that there was a new speedster in town that wasn't a mutant, they'd do everything they could to capture him for their own twisted ends.

She'd seen it happen before.

She wouldn't let it happen again.

 _ **Hours Later**_

 _ **Xander's POV**_

 _Something fishy is going on here,_ he thought as he walked down the sidewalk, being careful to keep at least two people in front of him at all times.

While New York City might not have been a place he spent a lot of time in, he'd been there often enough that he could navigate the streets to get where he wanted to go whether it was on foot or by car. Sometimes Slayers in different locations needed backup and, when every second counted, you couldn't waste them on asking directions or trying to find a map of the area.

The thing was he'd been trying to navigate his way to the fall back building to see for himself what was going on, only some of the streets he remembered had had their names changed. Indeed, even trying to use visible landmarks had proven to be only partially effective since not all of them were still there. He'd spent nearly an hour more than he'd wanted backtracking and going down dead end streets before managing to get to more familiar territory. By his reckoning he should be at the fall back building after two blocks ahead and one block to the left. When he got there he'd use his access codes to get him inside and through the communication runes inside place a call to the Scotland castle HQ. From there it'd just be a matter of waiting for some manner of extraction, whether it was the emergency teleportation circle in the basement or a plane waiting for him at the local airport.

 _I can't wait to see the looks on Willow and Buffy's faces when they see the new me,_ he thought with a smile at what his imagination came up with.

And it wasn't the younger body alone but rather the 'extra' he had spent his walking time contemplating.

It didn't take a genius to identify super speed like they had in the comic books and it'd been that line of thought that'd caused him to remember an old TV show he'd watched right up until it'd gotten axed. He'd tested it out with his right hand and, just like he'd expected, he'd been able to move it so fast it had been a serious blur and he'd even spied little bits of golden lightning dripping from it. It'd definitely been something of a shock to find out that he suddenly had the powers of the 2014 TV version of The Flash. The show had managed to last a full six seasons before getting the axe and, in his opinion, that was a pretty good run. Not as good as the Smallville show, which had managed to last ten seasons, but the last three seasons weren't all that great.

In any case, even with all the benefits he'd gotten, he'd trade them all away if it meant Dawn could be brought back to life.

He'd give the new powers and his life if it'd mean Dawn Summers would stand amongst the living once more.

It was then that he recalled how in the show how Barry Allen was able to travel through time and hope blossomed in his heart. If he could work with Willow on it, there was a chance he could save Dawn. He was sure using super speed to travel through time was a little more complicated than running as fast as you could and then focusing your thoughts on the destination. Nevertheless, between the strongest mystic in Europe and his own expertise, it was a definite option.

 _All I gotta do is get inside the fall back building and everything'll be on track,_ he thought as he turned the final corner.

And stopped.

Stopped cold.

What he'd been expecting all this time since the failed phone call was that someone had forgotten to pay the phone bill or had purposefully disconnected it for some kind of security reason. What he got, however, was a run down building with partially boarded up windows and a big fat 'condemned' sign nailed into a makeshift plywood fence surrounding the structure. With his experience in construction he could tell that the place hadn't been maintained in easily five years, if not more. Worse than that, the building didn't look anything like the one he remembered. The one he remembered had only been two stories tall and had a more office building look to it. This one was four stories tall and looked more like a warehouse, with a configuration of both windows as well as doors to match.

It didn't make sense.

Looking at the area with renewed urgency, he tried to reaffirm that he was in the right place by matching his recollection of the most visible New York City landmarks with what he could see at that precise moment. Everything looked right. The Chrysler Building was visible and the right size according to his memory as well as the Statue of Liberty.

"Wha… what's going on?" he whispered almost without realizing it.

First the two wrong numbers, then the store owner telling him that the phone was only two years old, the changes in the street names and finally this. What did it all mean? It was almost as if…

No.

NO!

It's not possible!

And yet it was the only theory he had that fit the facts.

The only way any of this made sense would be if he'd somehow been displaced across both dimensions and time to a world quite similar to his own.

How similar he didn't know but, considering the building he was standing in front of and the problems with the phone numbers, it was different enough that the Watcher's Council might not exist in this dimension.

It was then that he heard an odd sound and almost instinctively it made him look up into the air but what he discovered to be the source of the sound made him start to question his sanity.

Flying through the air, using two primary means of propulsion and two stabilizing ones, was a man shaped suit of armor with a red and gold color combo that was VERY recognizable.

The only problem with it all was the fact that it should've been a work of fiction, along with the man inside of it.

Iron Man, aka Tony Stark, was a comic book, movie and cartoon character.

NOT real and flying over his head.

Yet there the man was and he couldn't think of any excuses.

 _Guess I'm far enough away from my home dimension that the Council doesn't exist but fictional superheroes do,_ he thought as he walked himself over to a nearby bench and sat down. _Huh. That's one I never thought I'd be able to cross off my bucket list._

 _ **Greer Grant's POV**_

"There he is," Terri said, pointing at the rather shocked form on the bench a short distance ahead of them.

"Looks like I owe Suzy at the phone company Thor's autograph next time I run into him," she said as she pulled the car over the curb.

"Good luck with that," Terri said, making it sound like she didn't believe it'd happen anytime soon.

She couldn't exactly refute that since with no way of knowing when the next mutant, super villain or organized crime family member would pull something or which member of the Avengers would show up. Then, of course, there was the possibility that someone else might show up to stop the bad guys aside from the Avengers. In any case, while it wasn't impossible that she'd be able to make good on the debt she now owed Suzy, it'd likely take a while.

Fortunately for her Suzy sounded like she was the patient sort.

Getting out of the car, she was a little surprised that Xander didn't look up at the sound of her approach but closer inspection of his face told her that he was deep in thought. She knew that if she'd suddenly found someone beside her when she'd been thinking to deeply about a case she'd have been startled, so whatever had Harris' attention must've been big. With a subtle gesture to her partner to stay back and let her handle this she walked slowly and non-threateningly to the bench before sitting down by Xander's side. Instead of breaking the silence she let him control how the interacting would go and when he'd need to speak.

"You ever have one of those days when it feel's like Fate's really stuck it in and broken it off?" he asked just above a whisper.

"More than a few times," she replied, recalling some past instance where she swore that the Fates had it in for her.

"Well I doubt you've had it as bad as I'm having it right now," he said, turning to look at her for the first time. "When I woke up at the Future Foundation I thought that all that'd happened was I'd been transported across the Atlantic. Stuck unconscious for a little while, maybe. Turns out it's a lot more serious than that."

"How much more?" she asked, wondering what Xander thought had happened to him.

"Dimensional displacement, temporal displacement, age regression and super powers based on a classic TV show character," he replied, counting off the facts with his fingers. "And no way to reverse the first three that I know of. So does that suck or what?"

"On a scale of one to ten? I'd say eight," she replied, not entirely convinced the twenty-something guy was right about what'd happened to him.

"Only an eight? Why?" he asked, coming out of left field with his interest.

"Well, one: superpowers and two who doesn't want to be a few years younger?" she asked rhetorically.

"Okay, I'll buy the super powers since they are pretty cool," he replied, grinning just a little bit, "but it's more than a few years, detective. Try eighteen years."

 _Okay, that would take a bit of adjusting to,_ she thought as she tried to imagine suddenly experiencing early puberty again.

Assuming, of course, Harris wasn't just delusional and coming up with all these out there theories to explain away the figments his mind was coming up with.

Still, they lived in a world where blondes with hammers called down lighting, rich men with goatees flew around in suits of armor and nerdy scientists turned into giant green rage monsters. With all that you learned to have a very open mind when it came to what was possible and what was impossible.

"Look, I'm just a New York City police detective trying to make the city a little bit safer than it was when I first put on the badge," she said, deciding to take the honest route. "I've seen some pretty weird things since then and some stuff I'd prefer never knowing the details of. I'm not saying I don't believe what you're saying but some people aren't going to be as open minded. Alternate dimensions, time travel and age regression aren't exactly things you run into every Sunday. Most of it people don't see outside of a sci-fi movie."

"I know. Believe it or not I used to deal with things that the rest of my Earth thought belonged in monster movies. A part of me always wanted to let the truth get out so that the entire human race could help out, but a larger part of me knew that it'd just put more people in danger," he said, sounding like some of the police force veterans she worked with. "Plus, if I'd tried to convince people of the truth, they'd think I was some kind of nutcase in dire need of a straitjacket and a padded cell. I know when it's better to keep things to yourself and when to spread the word. Doesn't matter since I doubt I'll be seeing home again anytime soon."

"Don't say that. You've got a great team back at the Future Foundation to help you out and if they can't, I'm sure Richards or Stark can lend a hand. They'd do it for the challenge if nothing else," she said, figuring that piercing dimensional barriers would be tough even for those two geniuses.

"Not to knock the brainiacs but it's called the multiverse for a reason. There's literally an infinite number of alternate realities out there, going from almost identical to not even close," he said, sounding less than optimistic. "Considering the fact that I just saw a comic book character fly over me, I think we're far enough from my reality that getting back isn't going to be easy, if not completely impossible."

"I suppose so. Still, it could be worse, right?" she asked rhetorically with a reassuring smile. "You could've gotten sent straight to hell!"

"At least then I would've been on familiar ground," he said with a rueful smile.

 _What does he mean by that?_

Shaking her head she decided that it doesn't matter in the end.

"IF you're right then that pretty much means that you've got no money and only the clothes on your body in terms of assets. I know from experience that it takes a lot more than that to make it in this city," she said, allowing herself a small smile. "For the time being at least it looks like the Future Foundation is willing to put you up so long as you let them satisfy their curiosity a little bit. Who knows? If giving you a once over leads to a major breakthrough for them, Sablinova might give you some starter money and help get you official identification papers. Not a bad deal, really."

"Oh, yeah! GREAT deal. Be a lab rat for who knows how long and in exchange I get a couple thousand dollars and my face in every state and federal database in the country," he said, sounding like he wasn't thrilled about it but wasn't going to refuse it altogether. "Behold my excitement. Yeah."

"C'mon. We'll pick up a pizza or two on the way back," she said, standing up and extending her hand to help him up.

"I am feeling a little hungry," he said as he stood up. "Is it the best in the city?"

"Yep! Accept no substitutes!" she said as she turned back to the car where her partner waited for the two of them.

 _ **Nick Fury's POV**_

 _There, the final touch is in place,_ he thought as he looked at the apartment as a whole. _Now all that remains is…_

Knock!Knock!Knock!

… _the guest of honor. Right on time._

It'd been a week since young Mister Harris had gone on his stroll and since then the scientists of the Future Foundation had been busy at work attempting to understand his superhuman powers. Naturally his curiosity had been at an all time high and what information he regularly got didn't come even close to satisfying him. However this was the soonest he could risk calling on his hidden ace for more details, since that bitch Sablinova had been downright paranoid when it came to project security. Not that he could blame her, considering her current corporate status and her tunnel vision when it came to Daniel Whitehall. If he'd had an entire company, one with personal connections, pulled out from under him like she had, he'd be a bit fixated too.

That was why he'd waited until tonight to summon his ace to this apartment.

Silver Sablinova had been invited to a very prestigious get together of all the city's movers and shakers. She'd be a fool to pass up the chance to make connections that could help her reclaim her father's company and he happened to know that Whitehall planned on making an appearance. Needless to say once Sablinova spotted Whitehall, he'd be all she thought of and not in a good way. Odds were high that by the end of the night she'd be so upset by something the man said or did that it'd be a miracle if the woman noticed one of her own came into work late.

Walking over to the door, he opened it and could see that his 'friend' was feeling a little uneasy about the meeting.

Some wine of an excellent vintage should fix that.

"So glad you could make it," he said, falling into the mindset of a gracious host. "I have a sumptuous meal prepared over which you can inform me on Mister Harris' progress."

"I'd prefer to skip the meal if you don't mind."

"Suit yourself. I'll just help myself," he said as he strolled over to the table and sat down. "Feel free to begin your report at any time."

"As you probably know from Harris' trot about town, he possesses the ability to move at super human speed. We tried to find the upper limits of this within the confines of the building but he quickly proved that he could run faster than that when the treadmill fell apart under the accelerated wear and tear. We then relocated to a airfield outside of town before lining up speed guns the length of the landing strip so we could clock not just his speed but also his rate of acceleration."

He had been bit curious about that but an alternate means of testing Harris' speed had been one of his top three theories.

"So what did you learn?" he asked, prodding the briefing along.

"That if you ever want him dead you'll need a silenced weapon with considerable reach and a bullet moving at more than Mach two. We had him sprinting and his top speed topped out at about Mach one point seven five, though Sablinova thinks he can go faster with a bit of training and a straight road to go down. As for rate of acceleration he puts even the top of the line sports cars to shame. They might as well be a three year old's tricycle."

Fascinating.

That would put dear Mister Harris head and shoulders above the mutant Quicksilver's top speed and rate of acceleration. If Sablinova's hunch was right about the young man then he could quite possibly be and remain for quite a while the fastest man alive.

"We've confirmed that if Harris isn't wearing a specially made suit originally intended for the fire department, the air friction caused by his running at superhuman speeds will cause his clothes to combust. Nothing flashy, more of a slow burn. It's likely that if he ever tried running with someone past a certain speed, their clothes would also do a slow burn."

Something to keep in mind for his less than legal operations should Mister Harris learn of them and decide to do something 'heroic'.

"An accident during the speed testing resulted in him breaking his arm but after it'd been splinted it healed up within three hours, good as new. It is speculated that his healing ability would also render most sedatives and perhaps some of the lighter poisons ineffective against him since his system would burn through them too quickly. At least that would be the case at the normal dosages for a man his height, weight and build."

"Meaning that if we increased the dosage the desired effect would be achieved?" he asked, already running the mental numbers for how much to give Harris without killing him.

And how much of the same it would take TO kill him.

"Based on Harris' own description when he uses his speed, the world slows down eventually coming to a complete stop once he reaches a certain speed. Yet his own movements appear to be perfectly normal to him. This suggests that his mind accelerates in order to keep up with his body and it also suggests that he could assimilate large amounts of information at super speed as well. Read books, memorize maps and more of the same."

If Harris decided to turn spy, his skills would make him invaluable since he would be able to infiltrate a target zone, memorize documents and then run straight out before anyone could even begin to suspect the truth.

Perhaps he would offer Mister Harris that position at some point in the future.

"We're still going over the data to find out what else he can do but it'll be a while before we can say anything conclusively."

"Not to worry. Your cover is still intact and I'll make sure Miss Sablinova will get everything she needs to get those conclusive bits of information," he said with a smile as his investment into the Future Foundation was paying off. "Now, what about your own 'private project'? Have you made any progress there?"

"Some. However it'll still be a while before we can take it to the testing phase. I have the architecture all sorted out but there is still much work to be done."

"Disappointing but I suppose it's true what they say about science: it occurs in fits and spurts," he said, somewhat annoyed at the slow pace of the 'project'. "Just keep in mind that while God's patience might be infinite, mine is not. I've gone to significant expense to set you up someplace private and I expect to see a return on my investment."

"I am working as hard as I can without raising any flags with Sablinova. It wouldn't do for me to show up to work half asleep because I've been burning both ends of the candle."

While he didn't particularly care for excuses, he still needed his little mole so he put on an understanding face.

"Of course it wouldn't. Still, perhaps you can use your work at the Future Foundation to your advantage. Mix in some of your 'project' work with the legitimate kind," he suggested, believing the idea to be feasible. "I'm sure it wouldn't be too hard to come up with a feasible excuse if one of your colleagues inquired. Worse comes to worse, you can just 'work late' after everyone else goes home. No one would raise an eyebrow at that."

"I-I'll see what I can do."

"See that you do," he said, letting a bit of steel enter his voice. "Well, I think that's enough work talk for now. Are you sure I can't interest you in something to eat?"

"No. Thank you."

"More for me then," he said before he began digging into his meal with vigor.

It would get easier for his mole as time passed.

The nerves would settle, the lessons would be learned and before anyone knew it a routine would be formed.

That was how it'd been for him in the beginning and look how far he'd gone.

 _ **Future Foundation**_

 _ **Xander's POV**_

"Any particular reason why you wanted the suit to look like this?" Fitz asked as they looked at the finished version of the modified fireman's suit.

"Well, I figured that if I have super powers I gotta have a super suit and since nothing's faster than a lightning bolt, it'd make a perfect symbol," he replied, figuring that saying he'd modeled it on the Flash costume from the TV series would be a bad idea.

"I guess so. So, you planning on playing superhero?" Fitz asked as he snapped into place the golden and white emblem into its slot at the center of the chest area.

"During my off hours, yes," he replied as they began to turn away from where the suit hung. "Since I'm not independently wealthy I'm going to need a source of income, especially after what Jemma said my body's going to need."

"No kidding. Thirty thousand calories PER DAY! If we're talking Arby's Triple Decker Sandwich then that'd be over two hundred and thirty dollars every day just to keep you from passing out," Fitz said, doing the math in his head, "And if we're talking the most important meal of the day then that'd be a little over a hundred and twenty dollars a day."

"Yeah, and I don't know about you but the kind of jobs that pay that kind a money are a little outside of my reach," he said, privately wishing that Leo hadn't spelled it out for him.

Up until now he'd been more or less able to convince himself that he'd be able to get by somehow but, now knowing the price tag for just food… not a chance. No middle class job was going to be enough and he didn't have the education or the credentials to apply for anything further up the economic food chain. He'd been a part of the fighting side of the Council, not the business side, and while he did chip in whenever repairs needed to be done that wouldn't net him the right paycheck. So, short of scoping out a few places where treasure was buried in his dimension, his only other option was to apply for a spot on the Avengers and hope Tony 'Moneybags' Stark would pay the bill.

"No need to worry about that, Mister Harris," Miss Sablinova said as she walked into the room. "I already have Doctor Simmons working on a diet best suited to your new physiology and working on a way to make it affordable for you. Should it still be expensive, I would be willing to pay the difference in exchange for a few… favors."

"What kind of favors?" he asked, narrowing his eyes at the word 'favor'.

Most people who talked like that generally didn't want the hired help to know the details.

"Nothing shady, I assure you. A courier for a package here, bodyguard at certain events there and, of course, allowing us to continue gathering data on your abilities," Miss Sablinova said as she came to a stop in front of him. "I might not have the money I once did but the Future Foundation is still a successful business. I wouldn't be able to employ Mister Fitz and the others otherwise."

True. And if she was telling the truth about the jobs then he had no real trouble earning the money for his food bill that way.

"As for your inclination towards joining the costume crowd, I'd advise against it," Miss Sablinova said with unusual chilliness. "Risking your life and your future with nothing but a 'thank you' as payment… only a fool would engage in such activities."

"It's not foolish to want to use your abilities to help people, Miss Sablinova," he said, making it clear that he wouldn't budge in his goal. "As far as I'm concerned getting the occasional thanks along with the fuzzy feeling of doing a good deed is payment enough."

"Keep thinking like that and you'll never get anywhere in life," Sablinova said, implying her opinion of him had gone down. "People will take advantage of you and leave you with nothing in the end."

"As long as I have a roof over my head, food on the table and people I care about to spend time with, I'm happy," he said, not letting the woman's skeptical outlook on life get to him. "Anything else is just icing on the cake."

"I'll remember you said that when the people start accusing you of being a mutant and the police want to arrest you for vigilantism," Sablinova said with a sigh of exasperation.

The kind you give someone who refuses to see the truth and will only accept it AFTER it's been used to bash their head in.

"Hasn't stopped the Avengers or Spider-Man," he pointed out, remembering the picture he'd seen splashed over the Daily Bugle in the morning.

"The Avengers have special federal authorization to do what they do," Sablinova pointed out in a tone that matched the color of her white hair. "As for Spider-man, the police want to arrest him and more than a few of the anti-mutant organizations have already accused him of being a mutant. Maybe he is one for all we know."

"Well then maybe I'll team up with Spidey and help him out," he said idly, not really making anything definitive in his mind. "Cops can't arrest what they can't catch and I can go a lot places they can't."

"I give up," Sablinova said as she began to turn away. "Just try to look before your leap. I can't earn nearly as much off your corpse as I can when you're alive."

With that the owner of the Future Foundation walked away and he had a feeling that every time he stuck his foot in it, she'd remind him of this conversation.

With that conversation done he and Fitz headed to the employee lounge of the Future Foundation, intent on getting something to eat and seeing what was on the boob tube. They'd made a habit of watching some TV after the latest series of tests that'd been cooked up to quantify and define his powers. Most of what they'd learned he already the knew the broad strokes of from the television show but the practices they let him have on the air strip gave him firsthand experience. He now had a better idea of how to maneuver at super speed and how fast was too fast to pull a right angle turn. Much like cars if they went too fast and then tried to pull off a sharp turn, they'd just end up rolling the vehicle because of the built up momentum. Fitz had said that he'd see what he could do to increase the grip on the boots without being hindering to movement but he knew it'd all come down to how fast he could throttle down for a turn, then kick it back into high gear.

After arriving in the lounge he settled down onto the couch since, according to his tally, it was Fitz's turn to get the snacks.

Flipping on the TV, he frowned as something that was far too common appeared as the main topic of talk shows and news broadcasts: the Mutant Menace.

Once he'd accepted that he'd landed in a dimension where the characters from the Marvel continuum were real people, he'd known straight away that this would be there too. It was the biggest difference between DC comics and Marvel comics: the latter was more realistic and less cheery than the former. In DC comics good was good, bad was bad and the heroes almost never had to cross the line into the grey, much less the black. Sure, the company had dabbled a few times here and there with making their brand darker and grittier, but it'd never lasted more than a few years before they reverted to type. Mostly this was because the readers would cry foul at the change in mood, resulting in a decrease in sales leaving the top dogs no choice but to go back to old patterns. For Marvel, though, they explored topics and issues that DC never would and with them the good guys could become bad with the right set up.

One of the reasons he preferred Marvel to DC.

In his opinion mutants were just humans with a few extras added onto their genetic code. Sure, some of their mutations might influence their behavior but for the most part they were still the people they were before their powers kicked in. It was their choices, not their mutations, that determined who they'd become from that point on. Some let their powers got to their head, got delusions of grandeur, while others whose mutations were… unpleasant… wanted to spread their suffering around. When he got into his hero thing, if he encountered a mutant, he'd judge it on a case by case basis and, if possible, try to talk them down from whatever mayhem they brought about.

If they didn't listen to reason, he'd do his best to take them alive.

If taking them alive proved to be impossible then he'd do what needed to be done to keep the innocent people safe. Whether it was quick or slow depended on just how far across the line they went.

"Given this latest terrorist attack by the mutant group calling themselves 'Gene Nation', many people are wondering how much longer the mayor is going to wait before stopping these murderers," the news anchor said with a tone making it clear he wasn't happy either. "Despite the best efforts of the New York City Police Department, these threats to the innocent people of our fair city continue to kill and cause destruction wherever they appear. Clearly the time has come for military involvement and it'd better come soon."

While he'd admit that it did sound serious, he sort of wondered why Stark or any of the other Avengers weren't actively trying to put a top to them. It sounded like something right up their alley but he had yet to see a single newspaper article or news segment mentioning either a member or the entire team intervening in one of Gene Nation's attacks. Indeed what little he'd been able to research indicated that the Avengers were quick to handle everything above city-level threats, they didn't bother with street crime. Whether they considered it a waste of time or simply didn't want to show up the cops he didn't know but he did believe that, unless something changed, escalation was inevitable.

"Things are gonna get messy as long as those freaks go around doing what they please," Leo said with the sort of venom that was common to most citizens regarding mutants.

"Don't judge all mutants by that bunch," he said, trying to tilt things in a more objective light. "Even if we assume that only one percent of the human population are mutants, that still means there are thousands if not hundreds of thousands out there. If the number of crooks in the normal human population matches the number of mutants breaking the law then at best a quarter of the mutant population need to be stopped. Three quarters of their population probably just want to live normal lives, just like you or me."

He could see that appealing to the man's science side was having the desired effect because, as Fitz crunched the numbers, the ignorant anger dissipated.

"I guess so," Leo said, no longer sounding like the angry masses. "It just makes me angry to see them doing something so senseless. They're not fighting for mutant rights or even striking at strategic targets. They're just going on a rampage and killing at random."

"I guess they're more interested in making people scared of them then getting anything done," he said, a little sad at the situation. "When you're abandoned by your family and treated like a monster by everyone, getting payback tends to take priority over everything else."

He knew from bitter experience that not everyone reacted to super humans in a positive light. While some people looked at newly called Slayers in awe and sometimes even with excitement, there were a handful that immediately assumed the worst. Some had been called demons, others freaks, but in each case they were thoroughly given the message that they were no longer welcome and staying around would not be conducive to their health. In some cases Watchers were able to get to the girls in time to keep them from giving in to their darker and more violent urges.

Not always, though.

If the newly Called regretted their actions and wanted to repent, the Council did what it could to persuade the local government to release the girl into their custody. If the rogue Slayer was completely guiltless and intended to keep on adding to her crimes, they were brought down and turned over to the local authorities with the necessary tools to keep her locked up.

Buffy and Willow hadn't liked the idea since they believed all things Slayer should be handled in house but fortunately Giles was willing to back him up. In order to win the trust of the world governments, they had to make it clear that the Council didn't view itself as being above the law. Sure, there were times when they needed to bend the rules and in some cases ignore them, but only when lives were on the line.

Needless to say they did everything they could to keep the number of rogue Slayers to a minimum.

Fitz was about to say something when the news anchor suddenly got handed papers from someone off camera and, after a few seconds of reading, changed his demeanor completely.

"I've just been handed some breaking news," the news anchor said sounding like it was a big deal. "The mutant terrorist group known as Gene Nation have seized the Metropolitan Museum of Art and are holding all of the civilians inside hostage. No demands have been issued yet but, given the group's homicidal hostility towards non-mutants, I fear it's only a matter of time before they start killing the hostages."

"Looks like my debut is going to be happening sooner than I thought," he said as he got to his feet. "Feel like running support for me over the com-piece?"

"Me?! I don't have any experience with that kind of job," Fitz exclaimed, sounding both surprised and pessimistic.

"It's easy. I ask for plans to the museum? You call them up on your computer," he said, optimistic about the technician's ability to do the job. "I ask you what the cops are doing? Access the CCTV cameras in the area or listen in to the police frequency. You can do those things, right?"

"Sure. It's easy enough to do," Fitz replied, sounding less intimidated by the potential job. "Two can be done with an internet connection and a radio capable of picking up the right frequency. The last, though… it'd be easy if I just punched in Detective Grant's password but then she'd find out and she's smart enough to put two and two together. Hacking my way in would be safer but it'll take some time."

"Okay. No CCTV cameras," he said, admitting that time was something they probably didn't have a lot of. "Maybe next time? Write up some program or something that'll speed up the hacking process or insert a back door into the system?"

"Mmmm… doable. It'll take a few days to design then put together but I can do it," Fitz said with a confident grin on his face.

"Then it's time to get the show on the road," he said before running for the lab where his suit waited for him.

Time to see if he was cut out for the costumed hero gig or not.


	4. Hate Kills, A Speedster Saves

Disclaimer: I do not own any of the copyrighted materials contained herein. They are the rightful property of their respective creators and/or associated companies. I make no profit from this whatsoever and I have no intention of changing this in the future. I write because it's fun and because there are those who enjoy reading my work. Therefore it would be appreciated if you would refrain from taking legal action against me. I can promise you that whatever you get from me wouldn't cover even a fifth of your legal fees.

 _ **Inside the Metropolitan Museum of Art**_

 _ **Betty Brant's POV**_

 _Guess I should be careful what I wish for,_ she thought as she watched but did not draw attention to herself. _I complained about Jameson taking me off the Central Park story to work this exhibit opening and now I'm a hostage to mutant terrorists._

Not just any terrorists though.

Gene Nation.

These ones made Magneto's Brotherhood look like lawful protesters by comparison.

Say what you would about the Master of Magnetism's methods, but there was always a purpose in them, a goal to be reached, even if it required ruthlessness. For Gene Nation the goal was murder, suffering and pain. She'd done a few stories about their attacks and had a pretty accurate grasp of their mission. They intended to kill a hundred humans for every Morlock killed in the massacre that occurred nearly five years ago. According to what she'd been able to dig up, a group of mercenaries, some mutants themselves and some ordinary humans outfitted with cutting edge tech, had gone into the New York City sewer system looking for the Morlocks. Like the literary reference, the Morlocks were mutants whose changes were too obvious for them to blend in with the crowd and so they hid in abandoned subway stations or sewer pipe junctions. When the mercenaries found the Morlocks they killed as many as they could find without exception or mercy. Gene Nation was apparently survivors of that massacre and had a belly full of murderous rage they were eager to vent on normal humans.

Thus far the police had only been able to drive them off with vastly superior numbers and S.W.A.T. level firepower.

None had been successfully captured or taken to trial.

When she'd entered the museum, she'd expected nothing more than a boring tour of the new exhibit followed by a few speeches from those who made it possible. However it'd been just as the curator of the exhibit had begun his speech that things took a turn for the bloody. A dagger of bone had come out of nowhere to impale the curator through the neck, shocking everyone as the man dropped to the ground, blood surging from the wound. People tried to flee but found that they could not take a single step towards the exits, the reason for this becoming known a short while later. A human shaped being apparently entirely made out of brain matter and contained within a bronze colored exo-frame stood at the main entrance with his right arm extended towards them. It was then that a teenage girl with patches of hair as numerous and scattered as the bones protruding from her skin stepped forward and explained the situation to them.

Apparently a group of non-affiliated mutants who'd fit right in with the Morlocks had been arrested for trying to rob a family-run convenience store. People had gotten hurt on both sides but that'd only resulted in the police dropping the hammer even harder on the mutant perpetrators. Rumor had it that the judge trying the case had a known axe to grind when it came to mutants and it was expected that the man would do everything he could to apply the maximum sentence to each of them. Naturally the confinement alone was enough to provoke fury in the members of Gene Nation and so they'd decided to not only force the release of the thieves but also make a very loud statement. The Bone-Chick told everyone that if they behaved and did as they were told, that they'd all get to go home safely.

She didn't believe that any more than the rest of the hostages likely did.

That'd been half an hour ago and, while she could hear the sirens and activity consistent with the police surrounding the place, she hadn't spotted any signs of them storming the place. She was spotting signs of increasing impatience on the members of Gene Nation and that did not bode well for the hostages. If nothing happened to improve their disposition, Bone-Girl might get the idea that the time had come to prove to the police that Gene Nation meant business.

Something like an execution or two where the news cameras could easily catch and broadcast to every TV in the city.

"They're stalling! They ain't going to give in!" the gelatin-covered skeleton said, clearly having little faith in the police.

 _That is not entirely true,_ an unfamiliar voice thought into her mind. _I can read their minds. The officer in charge of the situation has made the request but is being opposed by his superiors. In his mind, letting a few grocery thieves go free is a small price for the safe return of the hostages._

"Then perhaps we should aid the flatscan in convincing his bosses to give us what we want," Bone-Girl said with a bloodthirsty grin on her face. "Pick two flatscans and take'em to a window. Make sure those cameras get a good look an' then gut'em!"

"It'll make for good practice," Skeleton Jello said maliciously as he moved towards a man in his late forties.

The other members of Gene Nation chuckled evilly at this and it was then that her worst fear was confirmed: none of the hostages were going to get out of there alive if the terrorists had any say in the matter.

Seeing Bone-Girl approaching with a malicious look on her lips, her mind flashed back to all the things she'd done as well as those she hadn't. Thoughts of friends and family she'd never see again.

And then out of nowhere a scarlet blur slammed into her potential killer, sending Bone-Girl flying short distance before dropping to the floor and going into an uncontrolled roll. When she heard the sound of more people being knocked around, she looked towards the sounds and saw the scarlet blur that had saved her moving around almost faster than she could keep track of. However, while the one that looked like a plant man and the walking brain were the only other ones to join Bone-Girl on the ground, the other two proved to be a little harder to knock down. The Gelatin Skeleton was hard because, like most gooey things, there wasn't enough substance for fists to do any appreciable damage. In most cases any blows levied against the member of Gene Nation just went straight through with no sign of having caused harm or pain. For the one that looked like a giant skull faced giant with spikes, it was the opposite. The mutant's mass and durability was proving to more than up to the task of enduring the blows being sent his way but, fortunately, the big man wasn't fast enough to land any hits of his own.

In a split second move the blur moved away from the giant before settling to take on the form of a crimson-clad man, though the guy seemed to be vibrating to the point where neither his features nor the details of his form were all that clear.

"You're a tough nut to crack, aren't you, big guy," Crimson said with his physical vibration distorting his voice. "Unfortunately for you I know one way that's sure to work."

Before her mind finished figuring out what'd been said, the Crimson Man was once more a blur but this time it was followed by a series of jackhammer bangs that could probably be heard from the street outside. It didn't take long to find the source as the stone floor surrounding the grey giant began to shatter in a circle surrounding the spiked skull man. More and more it went until finally the floor gave way and the giant fell through to the museum basement or deeper, depending on the building's layout.

Once the giant vanished from sight the blur moved to Gelatin Skeleton but what happened next puzzled her because, instead of throwing more punches, the apparent speedster was just circling the mutant. It was only when she began to feel a breeze, one that was getting increasingly stronger, that her mind came upon a possibility: a vacuum. The unknown hero was trying to create a vacuum around his targeted mutant and likely intended to cause the skeleton pass out due to lack of oxygen. Smart! If the Gelatin Skeleton's body lacked sufficient consistency for punches and kicks to be effective, then removing the air would end things in short order.

Too bad the walking brain and Bone-Girl were recovering along with the plant man because she doubted that they'd let the red blur continue unimpeded. This was proven when, with a sickening sound, Bone-Girl pulled a dagger of bone from her back before throwing in at the blur with lethal intent. At that point she suspected one of two things would happen: either the weapon would continue on its course hitting nothing or the speedster would cease his efforts in order to protect himself. Neither happened. Instead the blade appeared to vanish just before it would've hit the cone before reappearing on the opposite side to zip through the air, allowing its original owner barely enough time to evade. A few seconds later and the speedster stopped, with the Gelatin Skeleton dropping to the ground shortly afterwards.

"Nice try. Too bad I was moving so fast I could easily see your blade coming far enough ahead of time to catch it and return it to you," the speedster said, still vibrating his voice to make it impossible for a voiceprint comparison. "Now that you've seen what I can do, I'm gonna give you one chance: let the hostages go and surrender. I might not like how mutants are treated anymore than you do but this isn't the way to make things better for them. It'll only make things worse."

"Fuck you! Take him down!" Bone-Girl ordered, sounding furious at how her plan had been circumvented.

 _If I do, I risk losing my telepathic grip on a few of the hostages,_ the voice thought into her head.

"I don't care! As long as you keep most of them, the police won't try anything!" Bone-Girl yelled, clearly wanting payback more than adherence to her original plan.

Worried that the speedster wouldn't be able to handle a telepathic assault, she watched him and could tell precisely when the mind attack hit. The strange thing was it didn't seem to be having as great an effect on the crime fighter as she'd been expecting. Sure, he didn't seem to be vibrating his body as quickly as before but he was hardly writhing on the floor in agony or gripping his head in pain. Indeed, unless she missed her guess, he was slowly building back up to his previous rate of vibration with every second that passed.

"Telepathic attack? Good choice but I've had some experience with mental combat," the speedster said in a tone that indicated effort. "Sure, I probably can't keep you out forever but fortunately I have backup. Your highness? Say hello."

A second later the man that looked to be made almost entirely of brain matter began to jerk as though he was under attack by some unseen foe. Was that indeed the case? She didn't know and, when she suddenly regained full use of her body, she didn't much care.

"Get out of here!" the speedster yelled as he charged the members of Gene Nation still on their feet. "I'll keep them busy! GO!"

Not needing any further encouragement, the hostages all but stampeded for the front entrance of the museum but, just as she was about to leave the room she'd been held captive in, she stopped. She was a REPORTER for crying out loud! And this was the scoop of the century! Hiding herself behind one of the decorative pillars that lined the entrance to the room, she took out her notepad and began scribbling down in her own personal shorthand what had happened thus far.

"They'll never get out!" Bone-Girl said, sounding confident and malicious. "Before we showed ourselves, we placed explosives on every door leading to the outside. The second one of them pulls on a handle, BOOM!"

"Oh, those things! Pretty crude design but still effective," the speedster said casually as though not worried in the least. "Took me about three seconds to disarm them all. The hostages will leave just fine. Now, I figure you've got at best four minutes before the cops storm this place looking to either take you in or take you down. Trust me when I say that the former'll be a lot healthier than the latter."

"We'll die before we submit to upworlder authority!" Bone-Girl yelled, clearly borderline insane with rage. "And you're coming with us! ATTACK!"

"Why do they always choose the hard way?" the scarlet speedster asked with a bit of exasperation before once more becoming a blur that shot towards the members of Gene Nation.

It was almost comical to watch the new hero zip about the room knocking mutant terrorist after mutant terrorist around, their attempts to counterattack useless. Even the big brain man's second attempt at a telepathic attack didn't do much more than temporarily upset the hero's stride before whatever defense that stopped it before reared its head again. Much like before it knocked the Gene Nation member for a loop, forcing him to stop his offense in order to focus on defense. Then, with a series of blows she had no hope of following, the telepath went down and did not get up even though the rise and fall of his chest area indicated that he was still alive. Next went the one that looked like a plant man of some kind and, while it looked like the physical blows weren't entirely ineffective, it'd be a while before the Morlock went down.

"You can't beat me! I have the strength of more than a hundred of you dead flatscans amplifying my power!" Green Man yelled even as he tried to find the right timing for his blows.

"So you're some sort of spirit sponge? Got the perfect way to dry you out," the blurred hero said before he grabbed a metal rod that used to be part of a sculpture.

This way and that the blur went, with the Green Man at the center of his movements all the while, a wicked scraping sound could be heard. In less than eight seconds whatever the hero was up to was done and he stood only a few dozen feet from her. It was when he began to chant in some language he didn't recognize that things went weird because, with every spoken word, the marks he'd made in the floor began to light up one after another. By the time he was on his third verse every mark was alight but this time the strength of the light was getting brighter. When the light reached near blinding levels, the Green Man cried out in pain, almost as though he was being burned alive but, judging from the neon blue wisps of mist coming out of his body, it was something more.

"What you're standing in the middle is an arcane circle specifically meant to give trapped spirits the nudge they need to pass on to whatever afterlife they're destined for," the speedster explained after finishing his last chant. "Not easy to do, especially for someone without the gift for sorcery like me, but I've had a lot of practice. In fact, you should be weak enough for me to take down. Shall we find out?"

Not waiting for a response the hero was across the room, once more unleashing a barrage of super speed punches that were definitely having an effect. The Green Man was barely managing to stay on his feet and, with a thunderous uppercut, another member of Gene Nation was sent off to dream world. By her count that meant that only the grey giant with the spikes and Bone-Girl remained a threat but she was not worried. At the rate that the speedster was moving, it'd all be over soon enough.

Fate confirmed this when less than a minute later the girl with the serious bone growth issue fell to the ground unconscious.

"Well, that's about it for them," the speedster said, looking at the room. "Just have to deal with that big bruiser down below."

The red clad man vanished from the room, leaving her scribbling away on her notepad, trying to commit everything to paper before she forgot it. She considered trying to go after the hero but, given how fast he could run, he could literally be anywhere in the building and that was assuming that his pursuit of the grey spiked giant hadn't led him away from the museum.

So rather than waste her time, she decided that what she had was good enough for the next front page of the Daily Bugle.

Anything more she could get from her sources in the NYPD once they'd had enough time to throw the members of Gene Nation behind bars and give the museum a forensic once over.

 _Jonah's gonna hit the roof after he hears about this!_ she thought as she made her way towards the front of the museum…

…and reached the doors just in time to come to face to barrel with a heavily armed S.W.A.T. team.

"Um…hi?" she said, immediately putting her hands up so as to not be mistaken as a threat.

 _ **The Basement Level of the Museum**_

 _ **Xander's POV**_

"Fitz? I've lost the grey giant," he said as soon as he came to a stop after searching the entire floor his target had come to a stop on after he'd created a hole in the ground floor. "Has he gotten outside?"

"No. I've gotten into the CCTV cameras around the museum and I'm pretty sure I'd notice someone that big," Fitz replied through the communications device in the suit's earpiece. "He must've gone underground. Maybe into the sewer system or the subway tunnels."

"Any electronic eyes down there you can tap into?" he asked, not liking the idea of running through the entire network of tunnels looking for his missing playmate.

"Not in the sewers and most of the cameras in the subway tunnels focus on areas around the stations," Fitz replied from the safety of the Future Foundation building. "Considering the ass kicking you just gave his friends, he's probably gone to ground."

"Maybe but he won't stay that way. Once he's sure the heat's off he'll try to break out his teammates from jail," he said, not optimistic about the odds of the guy just walking away. "I'm going to give the subway tunnels a run and see if I get lucky. Go through the news footage of Gene Nation and see if you can find out their maximum number of members. I fought five in the museum but I want to know if Big Grey is going to try his jailbreak solo or with backup."

"On it," Fitz said, sounding like every supporting character in every action TV show. "I'll contact you as soon as I have something."

With that the connection was severed and he didn't wait a half second before running out of the building and down the nearest flight of stairs into the subway tunnels. Being careful to avoid the third rail, he began to move through the underground network while keeping his eyes peeled for any sign of new changes to the environment or the missing behemoth. Ideally he'd prefer to tie up this final loose end quickly because the alternative would be to wait outside whichever jail the police put the remaining members of Gene Nation into for the rescue attempt. That'd put a lot of officers and who knew how many civilians at risk since there were probably more ways of breaking out the Morlocks than he could cover at one time. He wanted to believe that with the powers of the Flash he'd be able to get anywhere he needed to in the space between the ticks of a clock but he was still new to the gig. Most of what he'd done against the other members of Gene Nation were things he would've done to demons that bore a striking resemblance to the mutant Morlocks. He hadn't tried vibrating through solid matter or throwing his self-generated lightning or any of the other abilities attributed to Barry Allen.

He'd stick to what he knew.

Until he could master the abilities that came with a connection to the Speed Force under controlled conditions, he dared not attempt to use them in real life.

From his perspective he searched the subway tunnel network for a full twenty-five minutes but for the rest of the world it was just a little over two minutes at best. Sadly during all that time he didn't spot so much as a single sign of the Morlock that'd been part of the team that'd taken over the museum. That could only mean that the sewers had been the correct call but given what was down there and the potential for losing traction would be great.

 _Guess I'll zip back to the Future Foundation to see if Fitz has managed to pick up any names as well as the pictures that go with them,_ he thought before changing his course for the nearest set of stairs leading to the streets.

Once he was topside he began to navigate the streets to head back to the Future Foundation, intentionally choosing the more complicated and clogged routes so as to hone his maneuvering skills. While it wouldn't put him up to par with dodging bullets, it was a basic tactic for slowing down fast people to put as many obstructions in their path as possible. Since most people couldn't phase through solid objects, they'd have no choice but to slow down in order to go around them increasing the amount of time it'd take to reach their goal. Seeing as how every second mattered in the hero business, he needed to practice getting around obstacles as swiftly as he could.

He was about halfway home when he came across a sight that demanded his involvement a speeding car was running a red light and directly in its path was a twenty-something redhead lady that was definitely easy on the eyes. Reducing his speed from three quarters to one third so that he didn't accidentally give her whiplash, he zoomed in and swept her off her feet, getting her to the sidewalk that wasn't within the speeding car's range of movement.

"You okay, miss?" he asked, figuring that it was possible that she had some kind of heart condition that didn't go well with incoming death situations.

"I'm fine. Who-?" the redhead asked, obviously a little spun around mentally.

"A friend," he replied before going after the irresponsible driver.

It didn't take him long to catch up and, once he was next to the driver's side window, he looked into the car to see what he was dealing with. Much as he'd expected it looked like two thugs trying to make a getaway, complete with suspicious bags in the back seat. They didn't have big dollar symbols on them or even the name of a bank but they definitely weren't the kind you could pick up at your local department store either. Deciding he'd try to talk them down first before bringing the car to a crashing halt he reached over and knocked on the driver side window. Once he was sure he had the driver's attention he mimicked the motion of rolling down the window since he didn't feel like screaming through it in order to be heard. The man looked stunned by the fact that he could keep up with his car and rolled down the window before he even realized he was doing it.

"You do realize that you would've stood a better chance of getting away with robbery if you obeyed the rules of the road and drove casual, right?" he asked in a conversational tone. "Now howsabout you pull over and we can end this before someone gets unnecessarily hurt?"

Predictably his partner pulled a revolver out of his coat and began to take aim.

No one EVER took the easy way.

Racing around to the other side of the car, he took a chance on his body's new ability to heal itself and rammed his fist through the window, clocking the gunman in the jaw. As luck would have it he must've hit the glass just right because it went through like a charm, allowing him to KO the gunman without breaking his hand in the process.

Seeing as how the die was cast, he decided to bring the chase to a quick and hopefully safe end.

Running to the trunk of the vehicle he reached out with his hand to the release mechanism and began to operate it at super speed. In the comic books The Flash used this trick to get past doors by hyper-accelerating the normal wear and tear until the locking mechanism fell apart, popping the door open. Now he didn't know if it'd work out so well for him but there was something in the trunk that he needed in order to stop the car without endangering anyone. Half a minute later the truth of comic books was vindicated as the mechanism went to pieces and he was able to open the trunk and retrieve the four way lug wrench from inside. Once in his hands he immediately began to work to remove the two rear tires of the vehicle, taking advantage of the fact that at the speed he was going it was pretty much frozen in place. With some initial effort and a dozen or so twirls of the wrench the tires were free, allowing him to pull them off and set them down safely on the nearby sidewalk.

Allowing time and gravity to take hold he slowed down in time to see the rear of the car fall down to the pavement, scraping and sparking through friction. It was this that caused the vehicle to begin to lose speed dramatically until it finally came to a stop, causing him to mentally breath a sigh of relief. A part of him had been concerned that he may have made a mistake that'd have caused the car to flip end over end into a building or just onto the sidewalk in front of one. With the vehicle stopped the driver predictably got out of the car, no doubt intent on making a run for it.

He couldn't help but smile at the idea.

Zipping forward at super speed he put himself directly in the crook's path, arms folded across his chest even as he maintained the physical vibrations that'd mask his features and distort his voice.

"So… no wheels, your partner's unconscious and the only thing standing in the way of you making a clean getaway is someone who can move faster than most people think," he said, adjusting his position to match the crook's attempts to get away. "Not having the best day, are ya?"

He could tell the precise moment when the man gave up thanks to the sag in his shoulders so he snagged a length of rope from the car's trunk and tied the man up. Not just the arms but also the legs around the ankles as well as the knees. Then with a slight nudge the crook fell to the ground to await pickup by the authorities.

"Smart man. See ya!" he said before running off and resuming his trot home.

It looked like he was starting to get the hang of the hero thing.

 _ **The Future Foundation**_

 _ **Hours Later**_

 _ **Detective Terri Lee's POV**_

"Where is he?" she said in a hard and professional tone of voice.

"Where's who?" Doctor Simmons asked, not liking being the focus of her gaze.

"Harris, that's who," she replied, not in the mood to be given the run around, "There was a hostage situation at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Twenty people were being held there by a group of mutant terrorists. Then something happened and they all came running out of the place. Cops on the scene asked them what happened and they said a man in red used his super speed to knock them all out and rescue them. Now New York City might not be new to superheroes but speedsters aren't exactly common. In fact there's only one that comes close to matching the guy that brought down Gene Nation. Now where is he?"

"Right now? I don't know," Simmons replied honestly, though with visible discomfort. "The last time I saw him he was with Fitz going over news footage of Gene Nation. Something about wanting to be ready for a possible breakout."

"Don't lie to me, Doctor Simmons," she warned, taking a few steps closer to the woman. "Commissioner Loeb is furious about Harris interfering in police business. He might not have any concrete evidence that it's him but he's not an idiot either."

"Really? I'd never have guessed," came a condescending voice from behind her.

Turning her head she saw Silver Sablinova walking towards her with another woman she'd never seen before close behind her. She could tell by the look on the white haired woman's face that she would be obstructionist and didn't like that one bit.

"This is not the time for jokes, Sablinova," she said, trying to pierce through the woman's arrogance. "Loeb was willing to let you control things so long as Harris stayed in the Foundation and under control. If your 'guest' makes what he did at the museum a regular thing? There are going to be some changes in jurisdiction."

"And if Commissioner Loeb can find proof that Mister Harris had anything to do with the incident at the museum or any future incidents, I would be willing to concede some jurisdiction," Sablinova said, not giving an inch in the discussion. "However by your own admission he has no concrete evidence, so there's nothing more me to worry about, is there?"

"You really want to play that game?" she asked with rising anger. "I've done my research on you. Seems to me every time you try to punch above your weight class you're the one that gets floored. Do you really want to add another loss to your record?"

"You really think you're in Whitehall's league, Detective Lee?" Sablinova asked with a condescending smile, "I admire your gall but not your grasp of reality. If Whitehall wanted, he could have your dear Commissioner killed and not have so much as a crumb of evidence point in his direction. So unless you have something more substantial to offer besides your own opinion, I suggest you leave my building. Our weekly review of Mister Harris' abilities isn't for another three days, after all."

She didn't like this. At ALL.

She KNEW it had been Harris who'd defeated the mutant terrorists because the description of her vigilante's powers was too close a match for what she'd seen during the tests of the young man's powers. Unfortunately all of the museum's security cameras had been destroyed shortly after the mutant terrorists had made their move, so all she had were witness descriptions. Witnesses who were VERY rattled at the moment and wouldn't be very convincing if asked to tell their story in a court of law.

"Fine. Just pass on a message to Harris for me," she said in a tone that made it clear she was dead serious. "Tell him that if he wants to use his powers to fight crime to apply to the police academy. Hell, I'll even put in the good word for him with some people I know there. But if he ever puts on a costume and tries to play hero, I'll slap the cuffs on him just like anyone else who breaks the law."

"I'll pass on the message, Detective Lee, but I think you might be overestimating your reach if you think you'll be able to stop Mister Harris from doing anything he wants to do," Sablinova said as she turned dismissively away. "After all, how can you put the cuffs on someone you can't catch?"

"I wouldn't be so sure, Miss Sablinova," she said as she walked out the door. "I wouldn't be sure of that at all."

Storming down the hallway, she let her angry thoughts fuel her as she made her way to the front entrance, where Greer and their patrol car were waiting for her. What did these people think they were doing?! Mister Harris might not be as hopeless as some of the people out there but no one could just go right out and fight crime after getting super powers. It took years of training, both of mind and of body, before they were competent enough and even then only the lawfully empowered men and women of the New York City Police Department had the authority to fight crime. No one else did. Not the Avengers. Not Spider-Man. Not the X-Men. If you didn't have a badge given to you by the city or by the American government then you had no business fighting crime. If anyone with a special power or a costume started doing it, there was no way the city wouldn't devolve into chaos since most of them would probably decide to play judge, jury and executioner.

She had to come up with a way to shut down this ridiculous idea of his and quickly before Xander got so cocky that he wound up getting innocent people killed.

Upon exiting the building she saw Greer leaning against the hood of the car and, with her anger at the people in the building, came a bit more for her partner. Unlike her, Greer didn't seem bothered at all that some rank amateur with super speed was pretending to be some kind of comic book super hero with the support of some minor organization. She'd argued the entire ride over trying to convince Greer that, as duly appointed law enforcement officers, they could not stand by and let someone engage in vigilante action, especially when they knew who he was. Greer, however, pointed out that, with all the evil mutants, super villains and tech based criminals coming out of the woodwork, conventional police officers were being a little outclassed. Her partner went on to say that, with the city's budget, there was no way they'd be getting the tech or the training to take on the likes of Magneto. The Mayor had a hard enough time funding what already existed, so adding any more to his plate would require an increase in municipal taxes and THAT was not going to make the people happy no matter what the reason.

Naturally she'd argued that if people knew that the extra money was needed in order to arm and train the police to protect them from people like Magneto, they'd be annoyed but willing.

Greer, of course, then said that she was welcome to suggest it to the mayor the next time Loeb dragged the two of them into the big guy's office for an update on the Central Park matter.

Considering her partner's tone, Grant saw the likelihood of success being somewhere between slim and none.

"So how'd it go?" Greer asked as she stood up straight.

"They 'claim' to have no idea where he is and think that we are 'mistaken' about him being responsible for what happened at the art museum," she replied as she walked around the car to the driver's side door. "Bitch even thinks we couldn't catch him even if we had probable cause to arrest him."

"It'd be tough. No doubt about that," Greer said as she opened the passenger side door. "You'd have to catch him completely unawares with a weapon he couldn't see or hear coming until it shot, and then succeeded in piercing his skin. If he got even the slightest warning, something that he'd consider a threat, he'd dodge it and probably be right in front of the shooter two seconds later."

"All the more reason to have something like that ready to be used," she said as she got behind the wheel. "If he ever went bad, we'd need something to stop him."

"And if having a weapon specifically designed to stop him, possibly kill him, turns out to be what causes him to go bad in the first place? You don't make a weapon unless you intend to use it," Grant said, pulling the whole 'chicken, egg' scenario out of her hat. "If he finds out about it, he might think that we don't trust him. Lack of trust on one side can breed lack of trust on the other."

"Not if we explain things to him. If he's reasonable and a good person like you seem to think, he'll agree that a safety precaution is necessary," she pointed out, unwilling to accept that her position might be wrong.

"And if he doesn't like being judged a threat when he hasn't done anything wrong from his point of view?" Greer asked as the car pulled out onto the street.

"Then he's being selfish and unreasonable." she said, in a way as immovable as the Statue of Liberty.

Anyone who didn't take into consideration the safety of others and only cared about their own lives could not be seen as anything else.

 _ **A Rooftop Close to a Police Precinct**_

 _ **Xander's POV**_

"So you're sure that there won't be any other Gene Nationers here tonight?" he asked as he looked down on the jail holding the members he'd defeated already.

"No. I've gone over all the news articles and footage since Gene Nation's first appearance and none of them show any members other than the ones you mentioned," Fitz replied through his earpiece. "If there are any more members then they must be reservists only showing up when they're needed."

"Well, I'd say they're pretty needed now," he said as he watched from his rooftop perch. "Big Grey might be a mountain of muscle and blades but the cops have really pulled out all the stops to keep his pals behind bars. Anyone looking to free them are going to have to fight their way through a lot of S.W.A.T. firepower and the spiked wonder doesn't strike me as the sneaking type."

"I'm tuned into the police band and have the CCTV system for the entire area up on the main monitor. If anyone tries anything, I'll be able to tell you where to go no problem." Fitz said with the utmost confidence.

"Good. Personally I hope that nothing happens but terrorists aren't big on letting their comrades stay in jail or letting a defeat go unpunished," he said as he brought the night vision goggles up to his eyes. "Good thing I'm never too far away from anything."

"Just remain alert, Mister Harris," Silver's said, confirming that she was observing the entire operation. "The fact that you don't know who else might try to break out the imprisoned members of Gene Nation means you must be that much more alert. Just because you can move at super speed doesn't mean it'll mean anything if you fail to see the threat coming."

"I know, I know!" he said with a roll of his eyes. "I know you don't believe me but I'm actually older than you and have combat experience. I'm no green recruit fresh from boot camp."

It'd been one of the things that'd hung around ever since he'd gained enough strength back to survive a Q & A session. He'd been a bit careful with just what he told them, nothing too outrageous, but Sablinova had been a little (read A LOT) skeptical about him being some combat veteran fit to be a commanding officer. So he figured that, short of some telepath, something he'd begun taking precautions to against, getting inside his head to confirm the truth, all he could do was work to convince her through actions rather than words.

Step one: stay close enough to the police precinct where the Gene Nation members were being held that he could keep tabs on things but not so close that the boys in blue would notice him. With the binoculars he had and its night vision feature, he could keep eyes on the exterior of the building for any signs of trouble or suspicious individuals.

Step two: memorize every sewer and subway access point in the area, along with which tunnels came closest to the precinct since they'd be the ones Big Grey would likely use if he tried to come at the place from below. With the sheer amount and complexity of the tunnels, if the Morlocks got into them and far enough from the precinct before pursuit forces could be marshaled, they'd get away for sure. Sure, with his speed he'd have a better chance of catching up with them than most but even he couldn't search every square foot of tunnels without considerable time. Victory would only come if he pounced the second he detected subterranean trouble.

Step three: have a surefire way of beating Big Grey when he showed up. During the altercation in the museum his super speed punches didn't have any appreciable affect on the mutant. That meant that perhaps the proper course of action would be to employ a tactic where penetrating that thick skin wasn't required. He could try to pull the suffocation trick he'd used against the skeleton guy, since most things in the world required air to breath and passed out when they didn't get enough. If, however, the mutant didn't need air for some reason, his only option was to use the strongest implements he could find and accelerate them to hurricane levels. Just like a simple plastic straw could be made to punch through a telephone pole if propelled at the right speed, so too could the right item pierce Big Grey's skin. The only risk with that plan of action was that if it wound up going right through the Morlock, it might hurt an innocent bystander by accident.

 _Hopefully it won't come to that._

He wasn't afraid to get rough and bloody if the situation required it but he never took such action lightly. If a conflict could be settled peacefully, he'd give it a shot. If a battle could be brought to an end by kicking ass and taking names, he'd get out one helluva big notepad before getting to work in earnest. If he had to kill some people to make the rest surrender, he'd do so with all due speed. If he needed to be… unusually brutal and ruthless in how he made an example of an enemy in order to terrify the opposing forces to the point of obliterating their will to fight completely, he'd deal with the nightmares later.

He just didn't want to go that far without exploring all other options first.

Hopefully, though, it wouldn't come to that because, according to some sources of Sablinova's, the captured members of Gene Nation were set to be loaded onto a custom prisoner transfer truck tonight. Where would they be moved? Camp X-Ray. He had a sneaking suspicion that the one in this universe was quite a bit different from the one in his native one. In his universe, Camp X-Ray had something of a controversial reputation as a place where the American government detained people with dubious legal authority. He was pretty sure that 'the law' and 'justice' only existed there if the people in charge allowed it and that was usually when they had something to gain by being 'nice'.

Maybe he was reading too many conspiracy novels with that last part but in this universe he might be a lot closer to the truth than he'd like to be.

"Anything on the radio chatter, Fitz?" he asked after his watch confirmed that two hours had passed since he'd started his little stakeout.

It was something he'd noticed since he'd really gotten used to his super speed: his patience had taken a nosedive. He still wasn't as bad as some of the younger Slayers he'd trained but he'd definitely changed.

"Nothing other than the usual security checks," Fitz replied, sounding a little disappointed. "Maybe we'll be lucky and… nothing… sq…"

"What? Fitz? You're breaking up!" he said as more and more static filled his earpieces until there was no way he'd hear his back up at all.

Given the situation and the timing, he felt it was safe to say that his wait for trouble was over.

Bringing up the binoculars, he looked at the cops arrayed around the precinct building and could see that they were having difficulty with their radios. That meant that whatever was jamming them was an area of effect thing rather than something directed at a specific person. It wasn't until he began to check the periphery that he noticed someone BIG stalking towards the precinct building, but it wasn't Big Grey.

There was too much hair on the head for one thing and he thought he could see claws where the fingers were.

The intent of the new arrival became clear when, the second an officer approached to tell the guy to get lost, the law enforcer got his throat ripped out. He didn't even think before he took off at his fastest speed from a standing start and before he realized it he had gone down the side of the building and was halfway to the hostile. He'd known all along that in both the DC universe and the Marvel Universe speedsters could run up and down walls anytime they wanted but until just now he'd been afraid to try. After all, if it turned out that he was the one speedster that couldn't run vertically, he'd either receive some serious bruises or get killed by the fall depending on the direction he was going. Now that he'd instinctively given himself proof that he could do it, he'd likely try practicing but for now he had a killer to stop.

 _First thing's first,_ he thought as he picked up the seriously injured officer before the guy had even fallen halfway to the ground before racing for the nearest hospital emergency room.

Given the viciousness and the damage done, he didn't know what the officer's odds of survival were but he wasn't about to write the guy off just because he couldn't be bothered. The second he arrived at his destination he put the cop down on the first vacant hospital bed he saw and then wheeled him over to a man and a woman dressed like he'd seen doctors dress on TV.

"This man had his throat torn out," he said as he slowed down enough that they'd be able to make out what he was saying. "Please do your best to save him."

He waited only long enough to see the resolve take form in their eyes before he ran back to the precinct building in time to see another officer be seconds away from a set of gruesome wounds of her own. Crossing the distance, he slugged the hostile, a feral mutant from the looks of him, and then slowed down to give the caveman a chance to end things peacefully.

Unlikely he knew but he had to at least try. It was the heroic thing to do.

"Don't know why you're here, Shaggy, but I do know two things," he said, trying to come off as being fully capable of kicking the hairy guy's ass. "You're not harming anyone else and you'd better pray the officer you hurt survives."

"Doubt it. Don't really care, though," Shaggy said, sounding completely unconcerned about what he'd done as well as a little appraise-ish. "Still, at least with you here things'll be fun."

"For me? Maybe," he said as he heard the officers moving to surround both him and Shaggy. "For you? Not so much."

He let Shaggy make the first move since he hoped that, once the feral mutant realized that there was no way to hit him or escape, that he'd give up. He didn't let himself get careless, though. Unlike some of the more cocky Slayers he'd seen, who made a game of letting the demon or vamp's attacks get closer and closer before dodging, he made sure to keep himself safe. It was only when he heard the sound of a revolver's hammer clicking that he realized that the officers weren't going to wait to see how his little game of keep away played out. Turning his head at superhuman speed, he only spotted the one who was shooting just as the barrel of his pistol belched fire before revealing its airborne payload. For a second he wondered if he should let the bullet do its job since, by his estimate, the shot would strike Shaggy in the shoulder rather than anyplace vital. The only downside he could think of was that it might obliterate any chance of a peaceful surrender since it'd spark the fight or flight response, with the former likely being stronger than the latter in the man.

So he went with his instincts.

Cranking things up to about two thirds of his maximum he chased after the bullet and, once it was within reach, he plucked it from the air before casting it aside to the ground. Keeping his accelerating where it was, he moved to take down Shaggy before things escalated. First a right, then a left, right and finish off with an uppercut. At normal human speeds this would've only staggered the hostile but at speeds rivaling most cars, it succeeded in flooring Shaggy in a way that left the man dazed.

"That was a taste of what you'll get if you don't give up," he said in a dead serious tone that was carried through his vibrating voice. "Gene Nation broke the law and will pay for their crimes. Right now you only have assaulting an officer. Don't make it any worse for yourself."

"Now where's the fun in that?" Shaggy asked as he got back to his feet, looking more improved with every second.

He was about to lay another ass whuppin' on Shaggy when out of nowhere someone grabbed ahold of him and he was forcefully brought into what he'd termed 'speed time'. It didn't last long because soon he was back in normal time, rolling across grass and gravel, but he was quick to recover both his senses as well as his footing. Looking back in the direction he'd been thrown, he found a man dressed in a dark silver suit with bits of black mixed in but it was the silver hair along with what'd just happened to him that clued him into a likely identity.

Quicksilver aka Pietro Maximoff.

"Didn't see that coming, did ya?" Quicksilver asked in a cocky manner.

"Gotta admit, I didn't," he replied as he prepared himself for what'd likely be a high speed battle in every sense of the word. "Mostly 'cause I didn't figure anyone from Magneto's Brotherhood would care what happened to a couple of Morlocks."

It was the only scenario that fit; Shaggy must've been this universe's version of Sabertooth and when you added Quicksilver it meant that the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants were trying to break Gene Nation out of jail. He doubted that Mags himself gave the order, seeing as how the Master of Magnetism was stuck inside a plastic prison. As soon as he'd had time to himself after realizing where he was he'd done some covert surfing of the internet looking to find out which other fictional characters were real. When looking up information on the X-Men, he hadn't found anything specific about the name but when he searched Charles Xavier he'd been much more successful. That'd caused him to search using real names rather than codenames and that'd led to the story about an incident at the Statue of Liberty where Erik Lensherr had been arrested on charges of terrorism. There hadn't been any specific details about where the man was being held but, considering the Jewish man's powers, plastic seemed the logical material to use.

He doubted very much that Lensherr would be able to get orders passed along to his Brotherhood which meant it was likely that whoever Magneto's number two in charge was had ordered the rescue.

"Personally I couldn't care less what happened to those sewer stinkers but when I heard about you, I got interested in finding out who's faster," Quicksilver said, showing where his true motivation rested. "Mystique, Toad and Creed can handle breaking out the sideshow attractions."

Knowing the lineup the cops now faced, it made sense that Sabertooth would be posted to deal with the cops outside and raise a ruckus in order to draw the ones inside outside. That'd create chaos enough for Mystique to use her powers to slip into the cell area to pop the locks and let Gene Nation out. Toad was probably just there to back up the blue woman in case a badge got wise to what was going on. Whatever the case, he needed to get back there as quickly as he could or else a lot more cops would get seriously hurt or even killed.

"Well, if it's a race you want, it's a race you'll get!" he said before slamming down his internal accelerator and shooting off towards the lights of New York City he could see in the distance.

Not surprisingly Quicksilver quickly caught up and even began to pull ahead gradually but that only meant he had to push himself harder than he ever had before. By the time that they reached the city limits he was running neck-in-neck with the Marvel speedster but, once he passed the street sign, he decided it was time to see if the silver haired man could maneuver. By his reckoning they were going a fair bit past Mach two and he was definitely feeling the effort he was putting into his running, but since he had a goal in mind he decided it was time to throw the race.

Waiting until the right moment he turned as sharply as he could away from Quicksilver before using his rough understanding of the city to navigate his way back to the police precinct where he needed to be. He didn't get much more than five blocks before his opponent reappeared and, judging from the punches as well as the trip up attempts being sent his way, the Brotherhood member wasn't happy at being abandoned.

"What's the matter? Afraid you can't beat me?" Quicksilver asked in his best mocking and condescending tone of voice.

"Nope. Just got more important things to do then feed your ego," he replied even as he did his best to counter the attacks sent his way. "Feel free to go off and mope if you want."

"Nah! I think I'll just introduce you to a wall at Mach two instead," Quicksilver said before reaching out to grab a shoulder.

Since he didn't want to find out if he could vibrate his molecules and pass through solid matter the hard way he pulled away before the fingers could clamp around his shoulder. Back and forth they went with his progress towards the precinct, being slowed considerably as he dealt with his fellow speedster's efforts to take him down. It was just as he spotted the intersection that'd bring the precinct into view that he decided to try something risky. Turning towards the side of a building, he forced a sizeable burst of speed, allowing to pull ahead of Quicksilver before attempting to do what before he'd only accomplished instinctively: running vertically on the side of a building.

He only climbed until he was certain that Pietro was also on the wall then immediately slammed on the brakes before turning around. As a result of this the gap between himself and the other speedster was shrinking at almost blink level speeds but he proved to be quick enough to extend his right arm into a clothesline position. He made sure to aim it at the man's chest rather than throat since he didn't want to find out the hard way that clotheslining Quicksilver at their present speed would snap his neck. The guy might be a member of the Brotherhood and a bit of a jock in terms of personality but he'd yet to do anything that warranted death or paralysis. Thus, when the two made contact, Quicksilver suddenly found his body slowing down while his legs kept going, causing the man to spiral feet over head into the air.

It took some work to reorient himself but he eventually managed to resume running up the side of the building and, once he was on the roof, he looked to get a feel for where his opponent would touch down. Fortunately for the grey haired guy touch down turned out to be a sizeable rooftop pool belonging probably to either some rich guy or a hotel. Accidental death averted, he resumed his running for the precinct, determined to stop the jailbreak before Quicksilver could catch up with him and before too many people died.

When he arrived at the scene he almost lost his lunch at the carnage that he beheld because, even with how little time had passed since Pietro had whisked him away, Sabertooth had done his share of damage. He could see at least five officers who were VERY dead and at least a dozen more who looked like they needed medical treatment soon if they were to survive. The man who preferred to act like an animal was currently advancing towards a group of S.W.A.T. members who were firing their guns with all they had. It wasn't having much effect since Creed was showing he had at least two brain cells to rub together and wasn't just walking forward soaking up the bullets like a sponge. The vicious mutant was actually evading the fire for the most part and the few hits scored didn't last long as they healed completely within seconds of being inflicted.

 _Gotta end this quick._ _Time to take the gloves off._

 _ **Mystique's POV**_

"Get out there and reinforce S.W.A.T.," she ordered before pointing to two others. "Come with me. This is obviously a jailbreak and those mutants are not getting away from me."

With those orders most of the officers in the room immediately made to grab their weapons and head outside while the two she'd pointed at fell into step behind her. Why would they do this? Because at the moment she was wearing the form of their captain that she'd killed and stuffed into a locker soon after Victor had begun his little rampage. She'd snapped the human's neck so there wouldn't be any telltale blood leaking out and the stink wouldn't be detectable for at least a day. More than enough time for her to free the Morlocks and embarrass the NYPD. It'd been as she'd walked to the squad room to give out her orders that golden flashes of light streaked by one of the windows, confirming a scenario of hers.

Ever since the news reports aired about a new hero, a speedster no less, assisting in the capture of Gene Nation, she'd predicted that the odds were good that the person the media had dubbed 'The Blur' might choose to keep an eye on his defeated opponents. That was why she'd contacted Pietro, or Peter as he sometimes preferred, since he was the only speedster she knew that might be willing to help. He hadn't been interested at first, having become less enthusiastic to help out his fellow mutants over the last few years, but when she'd mentioned the speedster and the possibility that the hero was faster, Erik's son had taken the bait. She didn't know how long Quicksilver would be able to keep the hero busy but, so long as it was long enough, she didn't really care.

A few more twists and turns and they arrived at the cell where the four mutants were thoroughly chained up, with some sort of device emitting an energy field in their direction. Some sort of mutant power suppressor, perhaps? She'd learned through the Brotherhood's sources that such a device was being researched by several big name companies with known anti-mutant positions but this didn't look like any of the devices in the photographs she'd looked at.

"Status of the prisoners?" she asked, hoping to find out if they'd be able to walk on their own or would need to be carried out.

"Vertigo field emitter is doing its job, captain," the guard that'd been at the cell when she'd arrived replied, nodding towards the unknown machine. "The muties are so messed up at the moment they're probably having trouble thinking, never mind moving."

 _Hopefully the effects will wear off quickly once I shut the device down,_ she thought as she adjusted her escape plans. "We might need to move them if the fight moves indoors. You got the keys?"

"Sure. Right here," the guard replied, patting the pocket where the keys were. "But couldn't we just call in the Avengers or the Fantastic Four? I don't like the idea of trying to truck these four someplace else by ourselves."

"I don't think that'll be necessary," she said as the last of her needed bits of information fell into place.

Without hesitation she pulled the dead police captain's borrowed pistol from its armpit holster and began to use it to kill all the cops in the room. Two died with shocked looks on their faces while last one was able to bring his own sidearm up in her general direction but he was still too slow. With a final shot the man was dead, leaving her to proceed to stage two of her plan: shutting down the vertigo field emitter and freeing the Morlocks. Kneeling down in front of its controls, she began analyzing the layout and comparing it to others she'd dealt with as a member of the Brotherhood. While the details might differ, certain patterns and color choices remained the same, so it didn't take her long to figure out how to shut the device down. Moving quickly over to the dead human with the keys, she plucked them from his pocket before moving over to the cell containing the Morlocks. Admirably they appeared to be recovering quickly but, given the environment they'd been forced to grow up in due to the human filth, she supposed that strong survival instincts were only natural.

"What're you doing, upworlder?" the Morlock named Marrow asked, with hostility and anger in her eyes.

"Why, helping you escape, of course," she replied even as she shifted into her natural form. "Unless you have a problem with that."

Marrow didn't say anything so she proceeded to unlock the cell door before entering and going to work on the chains binding each Gene Nation member. While not worried, she knew that gunshots from INSIDE the building rather than outside could very well entice some of Sabertooth's chew toys to come and investigate. A prolonged firefight with the NYPD was not on her list of things to do tonight so she sped up the effort of undoing the locks but, once they were gone, it was easy for the Morlocks to toss the chains aside.

"Let's go. I already have a method of extraction set up in the basement but we need to move fast," she said as she began to turn towards the only way out of the cell area.

"What makes you think we're going to do anything you say, Blue Scales?" Marrow asked, sounding only half grateful for being set free. "Now that I'm free I plan on slicing and dicing some humans for chaining us up before I leave."

"And get yourself caught? Again?" she asked, reminded of why some mutants didn't get admitted to the Brotherhood despite the potential uses of their powers. "The speedster who caught you for the police is in the area. I have an ally keeping him busy but if he's as fast as I think, he'll be back soon enough. Do you really want to get beaten a second time?"

She could tell that Marrow's defeat at the hands of The Blur was something of a sore spot since the Morlock's right hand looked like it was itching to reach back to extract a bone blade. However the kid proved to have sense enough to realize that, until a plan could be devised, getting her revenge would have to wait. An exchange of looks between Marrow and her team pretty much settled the rest so she led them out of the cell area to the stairs that'd lead them to the basement. If all went according to plan, Toad would have the explosives placed by now and, when they blew, a hole leading into the subway tunnels would be made. From there a makeshift rail sled would allow them to get outside the search range of the police fairly quickly.

As for what happened after that…

Most likely the Morlocks and the Brotherhood would part company but she would make sure Marrow knew that her little terrorist group owed her for this rescue.

A debt that could prove useful to Erik once she figured out where he was being held and freed him.

The walk was more or less uneventful thankfully, since most of the officers were outside fighting Sabertooth, but when she saw Victor's body slam up against barred window of the precinct, accompanied by flickering golden light, she frowned. Without some visual sign she had no way of knowing if Quicksilver was out there as well but, with a potential obstruction so close by, she chose to move quicker. Step by step they moved to the staircase leading to the basement and, as they descended, she pressed the red button on the transmitter she'd brought in with her to let Toad know to move out of the way. Five steps and as many seconds later she twisted a knob on the transmitter and a boom echoed through the air even as the ground shook. Upon arriving in the basement she was pleased to see that the hole was just as big as she'd wanted it to be and, once she walked through it, she spotted the rail sled with Toad at the controls.

"Let's get going!" Toad yelled even as he began prepping the sled for use. "That blast'll get everyone and their grandma looking this way really bloody quick."

"Get on," she said to the Morlock members of Gene Nation.

She could tell from the look on Marrow's face that she didn't like being given orders and preferred to be the one giving them. Looking at the other members of Gene Nation present, she wondered what it was about the boney mutant that made her a suitable leader. Considering the rough environment they'd likely all grew up in, she supposed that Marrow was simply the deadliest of the bunch, since it was common for the strongest to rule groups like these.

Nevertheless all of them got on the sled and seconds later were cruising along the rails following a route that'd allow them to avoid the trains while putting some distance between them and the police precinct. Their destination was an abandoned subway platform that Erik had ordered overhauled into a safe house a few years before his capture. He'd used dummy corporations and front men to get it done and then sent Victor to silence all involved so that no one would know of its existence except the Brotherhood. It had a concealed door so, as long as no one witnessed them entering, any pursuers would go right past it none the wiser.

 _Of course if The Blur catches up with us, I'm going to need to use the contingency plan,_ she thought with a grimace. _That'll be messy._

Still, Erik always did emphasize that having a contingency plan was a necessity for every soldier.

 _ **Outside the Police Precinct**_

 _ **Xander's POV**_

Feeling the ground shake beneath him, he stopped in his pummeling of Sabertooth as well as his evading of some of the shots directed at him by the NYPD. Apparently, despite the fact that he'd only attacked Creed, they still had him in the 'enemy' column, so they decided to shoot the both of them before letting God sort out the details. Unfortunately this gave Sabertooth's healing factor brief openings to patch up damage, making victory harder to come by. If the healing factor was anything like what he'd seen in the cartoons and comics, then nothing short of a wound that'd ordinarily kill a human being would be enough to end the fight. While personally he didn't have too big of a problem with that, he knew that doing something so bloody in front of the police would color their opinion of him significantly. Being the new hero on the block, he wanted to have a good working relationship with the police if he could manage it and only do without it if he had no choice.

Still, with the boom that he'd bet good money on happening below ground, he needed to kick things up a notch or he had a feeling the cops would find one of their cells empty when they went back inside.

Running to the open back of the S.W.A.T. van, he searched it quickly and found a good helping of corded black rope that he surmised was probably meant for repelling down the sides of buildings for window entrances. Picking it up and making a lasso with it, he ran back to Sabertooth before tossing it over the feral mutant and pulling it tight. From there he began to circle the bloodthirsty man, using the rope to tie him up from head to toe before using the last three feet of it to secure it all in place. He knew that there was a possibility of the mutant possessing superhuman strength and that was why he'd made sure that he'd tied the man up in a way to negate as much of that strength as possible. The rope would probably still break eventually but hopefully before that happened the police would be able to do something to cement his capture.

 _Hmmm… better give them a helping hand,_ he thought before getting a good grip on Creed before spinning him around at super speed then releasing him.

This, of course, sent the mutant growling through the air as though shot from a circus cannon, face first into the side of the S.W.A.T. van. Considering the van had armor plating built into it, he imagined the impact was quite damaging and possibly even resulted in a cracked skull. Hopefully with injuries like that Creed would be unconscious and stay that way for a good long while.

The police had stopped shooting for a moment, no doubt having trouble trying to figure out what to do next, so he took advantage of the pause to zip into the precinct building and find where the explosion had occurred. He checked the cell area first and was upset to see that not only were three police officers dead but the cell he bet Gene Nation had been kept in was completely empty. Leaving a second later he was able to search every room above ground in about five seconds normal time before heading to the basement to find a gaping hole in it. Stepping through it, he found out that his earlier concern about jail breakers using the subway tunnels was well founded. Closing his eyes, he listened carefully for any sign of a vehicle or people talking in an effort to figure out which way the escapees had gone. However, with all the echoes and the distant sounds of subway trains, he couldn't pick out anything solid enough to call a lead.

"Dammit. Some hero I turned out to be," he muttered before heading back up ground level and the area outside the precinct.

There were still police officers in need of medical treatment and he could get them to the hospital a lot quicker than any car or ambulance could.

However, thanks to his years of fighting the good fight, he had a pretty solid grasp of field medicine and knew when it was safe to move an injured ally and when to leave them be to be stabilized. One by one he checked the officers injured on the ground, quickly relocating the ones injured in non-life threatening areas to the same hospital he'd dropped the first one at. Those with the messier injuries he gave a once over, his Soldier-Boy remnants helping him determine how best to handle the situation. The biggest things that'd block him from getting the injured officers to the hospital would be if certain bones like ribs or the spine had been injured. While at his speed the officer's body wouldn't have time to do much, it still might be enough to permanently paralyze the person or puncture a lung.

 _Careful…careful…_ he thought as he felt about the first downed and seriously injured officer he examined.

Cl-lick.

"Back away from him, freak!" a man ordered in an angry as well as partially hate-filled voice.

"I'm not going to hurt him but he needs medical treatment ASAP," he said calmly while keeping his disguised voice vibrating. "I'm just trying to figure out if it's safe to run him to the nearest hospital or not."

"Yeah! Like I'm going to believe you!" the man yelled, clearly not believing any version of the truth not his own. "Your mutie friend did this to him and now you're here to finish the job!"

He could tell that the cop was getting more worked up by the second and probably the only thing keeping the man from firing was the fear that he might hit his fellow officer. Casting a glance at the other present officers who weren't busy tending to Victor Creed, he could see that they weren't quite as bad but neither did they look like they might try to stop their friend. With the lives of the still living but injured officers on the line, he decided to move away as he'd been ordered to do but that didn't mean that he wouldn't still find a way to help.

Running to the hospital he'd been dropping the injured officers at he looked around to see if there was anyone unoccupied who looked to be experienced enough. He almost immediately spotted a Puerto Rican doctor who looked to be in her late twenties or early thirties and it looked like she was finishing up with whatever she was doing. Moving as quickly as he dared without startling her, he found himself getting her attention a few steps before he came to a stop.

"There are more officers hurt but their buddies aren't big on letting me move any more of them here," he said, hoping that this wasn't a complete waste of time. "I need you to come with me to keep them alive until ambulances can relocate them here. Will you?"

"Well… sure, but… I'm gonna need more than just a paramedic's kit if it's as serious as you say it is," the woman said, sounding honest but concerned about how much a difference she could make with limited equipment.

"Anything you need I'll be able to get there in a flash," he said, confident that all but the heaviest of medical machinery and equipment he could get to the precinct without too much trouble.

And if he couldn't carry it all the way there, he'd just find a way to put wheels under it.

After all, why carry something when you can just push it?

"Fine," The doc lady said, going behind the nurse's station for a moment before returning with the mother of all first aid kits. "Let's go."

With a nod he zipped over to her, picked her up bridal style on the side that didn't have the kit, and zoomed out of the hospital. Knowing the route from the hospital to the police precinct by heart, it didn't take him long to get from point A to point B but when he came to a stop, he was reminded of one important fact.

Unless you're wearing a nifty body suit designed for firemen and modified for speedsters running above a certain speed could cause your clothes to smoke, smolder. The doc lady didn't take much more time than him to notice this and he could tell that she was a little thrown by being at the hospital one second then outside a police precinct the next. Still, she quickly began to pat down the smoldering parts of her doctor's coat that thankfully was the only article of clothing damaged by the super speed journey.

"Give a lady a little warning next time whydontcha!" she growled at him before looking around and spotting the injured officers.

After that she became a woman with a mission and god help anyone who got in her way.

From there he became Mister Super Step N Fetch, using his speed to go back and forth from the hospital grabbing whatever the doc needed to tend to her patient no matter what it was. If the hospital didn't have it he ran about in an ever-widening search pattern, checking every open store to see if they had it before taking it while leaving only a 'I will bring it right back' note behind. He knew it could technically be called stealing but the fact that he'd return it as soon as the lady doc didn't need it any more should count for something. Besides, only the most miserable and miserly store owner would complain about his merchandise being used to save brave police officers from probable death.

Hell, it was probably the best form of advertisement they could hope for! 'My merchandise saves lives, accept no substitutes' just couldn't be beaten.

He wasn't sure how much time passed before the doctor told him she'd done everything she could to stabilize the wounded and patch up their more life threatening injuries. Looking about the area, he had to admit that it was looking sorta like one of those tents he'd seen on the show 'M.A.S.H.' when he was younger. Probably had most of the equipment you'd find in one, too.

Only time would tell how many injured police officers would survive their injuries, much less return to serve the city as law enforcers.

Personally he was hoping all of them made it, if for no other reason than because it'd make this night feel like less of a failure to him and more like a stalemate.


End file.
